NOLA blogger Forgotston has a very annoying and frustrating story -
forgotston.com » Battle of New Orleans Part II
Apparently, there is going to be another war in New Orleans. See story here.This time the war will be because some (not all) of the low-income public housing projects are being demolished to make way for new housing, some of which will be mixed income and some will be individual residences for low income individuals.
“If you bulldoze our homes, we’re going to fight,” Sharon Jasper, who lived in one of the developments shuttered after Hurricane Katrina, said before the council meeting. “There’s going to be a war in New Orleans.”
Note the reference to “our homes.” These are publicly-owned and taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings.
This perfectly illustrates one of my biggest complaints about taxpayer funded charity. Nearly twenty years ago when I was in need I applied for, and got, welfare. I got off of welfare at my earliest opportunity, but the hours I spent waiting in line with other beneficiaries were as educational as the secretarial course the welfare system paid to put me through. Those women felt entitled: “my check,” “my benefits,” “my food stamps,” “my money.” One woman’s youngest child was going to turn 18, and she had been on welfare his entire life. What to do? She and another woman came up with a strategy – take some job, any job, and “hurt” her back. Then social security would “kick in” and she’d be set for life. Entirely too many people think there should be a way to get through life without having to work. That’s not reality – or it shouldn’t be. We are fools to allow it.
The very fact that Ms. Jasper is outraged, outrages me. Her feeling of entitlement is completely misplaced, and it’s offensive. These projects were never supposed to be homes. They were supposed to be places to live temporarily, while you get on your feet and become independent again. We don’t need to provide Ms. Jasper with new housing in any location – we need to teach her whatever she needs to know in order to pay her own way.
ADDED: Just out of curiosity I googled “sharon jasper” “new orleans” and found this article – (emphasis added)
It’s another white hot New Orleans afternoon and Sharon Jasper is throwing off some heat of her own. The 58-year-old Jasper’s voice rises and falls with a biblical fervor as she stands outside a 75-year-old public housing project called the St. Bernard Housing Development. “I am a former resident of St. Bernard. My mother and father moved here in 1949, when I was 6 months old,” she says,
In other words, she’s lived on the dole to one extent or another for the last 57.5 years and now she’s not receiving “her” benefits in exactly the way she wants to receive them. It’s a bit late for her to start taking full responsibility for herself now, at nearly 60 years of age, but at least we can say no to another generation like Ms. Jasper. It’s not called “public” housing for nothing. What the government pays for, it has the right to control, and if that means knocking down this project and allowing people who qualify for public housing to move into other projects which are renovated and available right now (as Forgotston claims), then so be it.
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