There was a story in the newspaper today about the neighbors accepting the homeless program on 62 Elm Street. The reporter referred to the neighbors as being "seemingly implaccable."
Should neighbors asking for no sex offenders and 24 hour supervision at the shelter be referred to as being implaccable? They sound pretty reasonable to me.
Same Time Next Year
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It’s been nearly a year since I wrote about the problems that come from
having 11 bosses who are not on the same page about anything, as well as
suggestion...
4 months ago
11 comments:
With the possible exception of the police department, the Worcester Telegram seems like the mouthpiece of the Worcester government.
I figured I would high jack this thread since many might not read the below ones..
Dave Z keeps mentioning that Worcester should be compared more to Springfield, MA ...see recent Forbes opine on Springfield, Massachusetts...no offense Dave Z and I mean this but I would rather see out leaders pooling up with Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Haverhill, Hyannis, most if no all Greater Boston smaller cities than Springfield, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell...lalalalalalala..amy I the only one??
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/04/economy-ohio-michigan-biz_cx_jz_0805dying_slide_8.html?thisSpeed=15000
well, I see both sides. Of course neighbors don't want sex offenders living next door. On the other hand, the PIP has been the center of controversy for decades in Worcester. The PIP census has been at its lowest in 15 years lately because of the new housing-based programs started by SMOC. Its simple, replace shelters with smaller, more manageable housing. The globe just did a study showing a 30% decrease in street homeless nationwide due to this new method. If we are really serious about shuttering the PIP as we know it, you need to continue to move people into housing. Also, for the record, the driving force behind the PIP population are those with serious mental conditions. They outnumber substance abusers to my knowledge. These mentally ill people used to be housed on Worcester's poor farm way back, and more recently, in mental institutions, all now gone. Some have been cycling through for decades. What do you all propose to do with people with serious mental issues, seriously?
Separate your plans for mentally ill people from the general discussion on CDC-style housing for the low-income, I know where that stands here! Also, I believe in regional placements of these programs, but would love to hear your ideas!
Dave M.
I agree Dave..when we closed down the institutions that helped folks with mental illness we caused even more problem..the solution is to start helping folks who really need help and get those who we are helping but can do on their own off of the public dole-there will then be plenty of money to help those that need our help the most. We solved no budget balance closing down those hospitals that helped the mentally ill
Hey Paulie,
I don't agree with Springfield comparisons either but I understand what David Z is getting at because I feel the same way. It's all about people and while there are many things they do way better than us out there in the 617 there are other things that simply do not require as much effort or "perfectness" as they might here that people do just shrug off as having to do with Worcester and not looking at the bigger picture.
I will give you a personal example.
I do the one show a month over at the Hotel Vernon. They are good shows. I try to get the word out best I can but I am no promotional genius. I am at my wits end trying to figure out how to get people in the door for these shows.
All of the reasons that anyone can come up with as to why the shows don't work are probably right on the money, but those reasons don't hold water at PA's in Somerville, which does the same damn type of shows I do and still manages to bring a decent crowd in with limited to no promotion at a very very very shitty bar with very shitty sound.
If I were working with the metropolitan area and sheer numbers that PA's is dealing with I would be able to do the same thing.
What doesn't get a lot of dialogue, and I cannot understand why, is that Worcester's problem is a regional one, which is something that should be being addresses by our representatives on Beacon Hill as well as Jim McGovern. Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, Revere and Quincy share the burden with Boston of being part of a large metro area. Pawtucket, Cranston, Central Falls and East Providence share the burden with Providence.
Don't you think it's time that Auburn, Millbury and Shrewsbury step up to the table and work together with us to deal with our regions problems? Maybe help spread out the density of our low income folks so that they are not as concentrated in one city as they are here? The thing is that they don't consider it to be part their problem, they consider it to be our problem. How many people in Millbury pay attention to day to day Worcester politics and policies you think? How many people in Quincy pay attention to day to day Boston politics and policies? How many in Pawtucket are paying attention to Providence? These are the comparisons I am interested in.
The thing about comparisons Paulie, as I have written about before, is that there are no real comparisons for Worcester. We are kind of an anomaly. For everything we can look at in Somerville that they do right we also have to remember everything they have going for them as far as numbers go that we do not. Thing you also have to remember when dealing with numbers of that size is turnover. It takes a lot longer for turnover to happen here simply because of the low numbers actually doing the turning over, where it happens quicker out there. I remember when if you were a musician the place to live was Allston. A lot of musicians still live there, but more live in Somerville now. We don't have that kind of quick ebb and flow and change in the Worcester area. Can you even imagine 10,000 artists and musicians just descending on downtown Leicester over the course of a decade? It's just not reality.
Can we do things more like Somerville and Cambridge? Absolutely. We can't just jump and do everything like they do though because many and most things work there simply due to numbers and they are things that really won't work here until we change not only the demographic of the city but the demographic of the region as well.
Simply put, people from Central Massachusetts are not city people. That's why they live in Central Massachusetts. If we want Worcester to be a better city, that needs to change. You can do as much awesome stuff as you want in the urban core and the large percentage of people who live in Holden, West Boylston, Shrewsbury, Grafton, Millbury, Auburn, Leicester and Paxton won't be coming into the city to use it because they don't like the congestion, unsightliness, and cultural differences they have to deal with when they come here and that is why they choose to live where they do. Worcester is carrying an entire regions negative weight and social problems and they are carrying it all in about ten square miles of space without the help of anyone else at all. This needs to change. This needs to be spread out. The suburbs (read: small towns) need to step up.
This is why I feel people who live in the area just don't get city living. People claim to want to be a real city but they really don't. In a real city the majority of the city is a friggin city and then even many of the bordering municipalities are also cities. Here this is not the case and the city will never be what we all know it can be until this changes.
I love the Westside and some areas of the suburbs are really beautiful also, but come on people, can you please give me three or four urban neighborhoods that exist between 495 and the Quabbin that where people take the same amount of pride and caring?
Central Mass- Amazing towns, god awful cities.
lot to swallow Gabe:>)
There is an ole saying Gabe.."you wanna soar like an eagle then you hang with eagles"...comparing us to Springfield, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell is hanging with turkey's...we never thought that Davis Square or any square in Somerville would be considered as desireable as Cambridge and today it is-many are..I am fully aware of the differences Gabe, I have owned in both cities for 20 years:>) and lived in both:>)..Worcester needs to start hanging with winner cities in this state and it needs to start watching what winner cities in this state are doing..who cares what Springfield is doing anymore!
Like I stated many times before as has many others..no more low income housing is a start...Congressman Capuano, Lynch, and if he was alive Moakley would all have been or would be run out of office if they brought in as much low income housing to their district as we have in our pipeline...why would other communities want to share the burden when our leaders have pretty much given up acres and acres of prime urban landscape to so many who contribute nothing to the community?? Worcester leaders plan to eradicate homelessness and be a model for the World on the backs of many,many middle class citizens and at no cost to them since many if not all have no plans to house any of them or have any of them live next door to them(in early days we used to call many of these cats, bums:>)
No disrespect here Gabe but Worcester is a very lazy city.....we have a pretty lame electorate that is in love with medocrity...da ya think the vendor issue will evah get resolved and our elected officials will finally get onto some issues really effecting the city?? Our bright minds and entrepenuers aren't just leaving they are laughing as they do!
I'll continue to bang the gong for our leaders to start looking east for ideas and solutions..this is where our bright minds and entrepenuers are heading to-some may say fleeing:>)
Paulie, people in Central Mass don't care about about city living like you and I do. The people demanding it are a minority.
Elm, Highland, North Main, Downtown, Shrewsbury St and The Canal District are pretty much at a stand still until Worcester can get people living there. These neighborhoods are not overrun with low income housing. They are overrun with NO housing and overpriced housing.
Where are the people?
Oh that's right no one wants to live there. Why? Because people who grew up here and stay here don't like city living, people who do like city living move away, and people that come here and try it out find better city living within an hour in any direction.
We agree on many of the same things Paulie but one of which we don't is the neighborhoods. The major problem with your neighborhood is low income sure but we are not about to just magically get rid of those people. They are here, in Worcester County and odds are they aren't going anywhere, not quick enough for any of us to enjoy the end results. Somerville got rid of the low income and there was a turnover but where do you think those people went? They went somewhere. A ton of them probably ended up here. Maybe you aren't the only Somerville expat on your block huh Paulie? I love what you are doing down there Paulie and I have never said this before but man oh man do I wish you did what you did all those years ago in Green Island or the Canal District. You just did it in the wrong neighborhood.
There are about 6 neighborhoods in district 2 that have pretty much arrived and are just waiting for people to move in and start living in them. They need improvements sure but they are the types of improvements that are only going to be made by people living there. Low income housing is not the problem in those neighborhoods. People not living there is.
Central Bay Staters as a majority don't like city living. Period. For living here as long as you have I am surprised you haven't realized it yet. It's not that the people are lazy it's that for as much bitching as what goes on everyone for the most part is okay with what they have. It would be different if they were living in the urban core and bitching but they aren't, and they won't be. They want yards and dogs and peace and quiet. They don't get excited about people everywhere and the noises and smells of the city. They simply aren't city people. I have lived in the area almost my whole life and I am telling you this.
Six neighborhoods that sit ready to move in, all in District 2, and as Daily Worcteria reported tonight, the councilor representing this district, with one statement, showed that his head is so far up his own ass when it comes to the needs of his own district that it should make the entire city stand up and take serious notice.
See, while low income housing is a huge problem and definitely right up there competing, it is neck and neck with the fact that most Central Bay Staters do not and will not embrace city living as a their own lifestyle and that is why they choose to live in Central Mass. This is a total and complete reality.
Gabe..cities are always changing-folks moving in from elsewhere and moving out..like the cycle of life...like waves coming in and going out...we have folks from elsewhere moving here Gabe..they just aint got no jobs nor do they want them..I'd differ with you on the low income housing in those areas..take away all he Sexy 8's and you would have an even larger vacany factor in this city than already exists..recent report from city officals at weekly Vernon Hotel weekly Wed. meeting pegged 60% of the immediate Canal area population under the poverty level
Gabe;
the census report, decreasing car registrations in the city and the recent interview with the School Superintendent say it all mate..good folks are moving out to sea with the waves and the rest are coming ashore with the incoming ones.
I have just spent the last 4 hours listening to nothing but nonsense from a house on Winfield Street that as been flagged now by me and the Biz group I am a member of as a trouble house - it is 12:30AM..umpteen e-mails and meetings and we still can't get it resolved..this is one of the huge problems in this city..an inability to get something down that effects the neighborhoods you speak of.
You and I are screwballs..smart folks would not put hemselves throught this nonsense:>)
I, unlike some Canal District advocates see The Canal District and Green Island as two completely seperate neighborhoods. The Canal District has hardly anyone living in it. Downtown has hardly anyone living in it. North Main has hardly anyone living in it.
Green Island is where all those poverty numbers come from.
If between The Canal District, Downtown, and North Main there are more than 1500 people total I would be very very very surprised.
I have to get on the stick with block by block thing but I already did all the research for Downtown.
26 city blocks, 9 residential buildings, in all of Downtown. This is an issue.
Hyannis has an on-going downtown inituative that changed the landscape down there from all business to mixed use-doing wonders to downtown Hyannis which realized it was becoming an urban center for Cape Cod
I am staying in a new condo above the ole Guido Murphys tomorrow night on Main at Sea Street-going down to see the Saw Doctors..Hyannis rezoned allowing for residential above commercial to bring more folks downtown to live to have that 18 city that we crave here
I'd rather see us collaborating with Hyannis instead of Springfield..I don't care if the two cities are apples and oranges..why saddle up with another community having no successes themselves
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