Memoirous

I’ve written at this blog before about media saturation. Where even something as significant as the War on Poverty gets churned over and over into a sound byte. Anyway, I listen to NPR in the morning and been hearing about the impact of this far-reaching legislation. At least that was how it was envisioned. I can tell you from my experience living in Uptown these past few years—it feels like a War on the Poor. When I first came to Uptown it felt like a VERY DIFFERENT place. There was trash every where, people lived in their cars, vacant lots were full of trash. Every weekend a building burned. I and a number of other residents worked to improve the lives of the people around us. At times it seemed like a war, being surrounded by rubble and the wounds typical of those living in poverty. I remember one guy, a terrible junkie who would come by for our neighborhood feeding program. I remember thinking, He could be my brother. He was young and somewhat attractive—as if he’d...

Where is He Going To Put These People? http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/18522480-452/aldermans-reason-for-shuttering-cubicle-hotel-cock-and-bull.html A series of articles in the Chicago Sun-Times by Mark Brown So today I sat down and worked on a timeline pieced together from newspaper articles on-line mostly from last year and early this year. Cappleman Promises: a timeline 1/31/2007 before coming into office campaigned that he would fight to preserve and maintain existing “affordable” housing in the 46 th ward. 1/2012 after elected alderman, Cappleman came into office and established a “Problem Building List” targeting several SROs, a type of housing often the last stop before homelessness and shelters http://james46.org/problem-building-list/ 2/27/2013 From article by Mark Brown: I asked Cappleman if he’d worked to build any new single-room occupancy housing in his ward since taking office two years ago. The answer was no. The Chateau, 3820-3838 N...