Elizabeth Projects (7th St, Elizabeth Ave, etc)

[KJHburg]

I saw that lady's letter to editor of the Charlotte 5 about Mr Sealey's article.  If affordable housing needs to be in this immediate area it should be in Cherry, a residential neighborhood not between  major thoroughfares 3rd and 4th Street in an area that has been commercial for decades.  Cherry is best suited for any such project with its less   crowded streets and slower moving traffic.   It is obvious to all she is the biggest NIMBY proponent  as she wants to build this housing across a 4 lane thoroughfare from HER neighborhood.  However we know there is some affordable housing being built in Cherry and the remaining land values are so sky high nothing else affordable could work in there. 

Also I did not like the smart arse comment at the end where she says Mr Sealey is not allowed to express an opinion on this because he currently resides in NYC. 

""But, I respectfully disagree with the basis upon which Mr. Sealy implores residents to speak up in support of this project from his office in New York City.""

He knows more about development and urban design in this city than most anyone on this UP board.  I stand this tower should be built and I don't recall any other office project being asked to include affordable housing. Not one.  Several huge mixed used projects but not a single office building and a hotel on existing commercial developed property have been asked to include affordable housing. 

[Hunted]

I wonder if she’d have the same outrage if a restaurant was being built there. I’m just not following what the significance of there not being a cheap residential component is.

Just an anti-development NIMBY weirdo. 

Am I the only one who feels like wanting low-income complexes to be built in your neighborhood is the equivalent of wanting the crime rate in your neighborhood to increase?! Lol

[Durhamite]

1 hour ago, Hunted said:

I wonder if she’d have the same outrage if a restaurant was being built there. I’m just not following what the significance of there not being a cheap residential component is.

Just an anti-development NIMBY weirdo. 

Am I the only one who feels like wanting low-income complexes to be built in your neighborhood is the equivalent of wanting the crime rate in your neighborhood to increase?! Lol

How are you flippantly devaluing a concern of ANY resident?  We all know the "code" words for poor or working class Black which quite frankly  isn't  synonymous with crime no matter how the media  portrays it.  Maybe you should spend  more time  getting to know your city.   Isn't that one of the reasons Charlotte gets blamed for lack of character?   I'm for this development (I like the project) and maybe if Charlotte had taken these "little" voices more seriously decades ago, a lot of it's history would still be in tact.   No matter the intent, I don't think it's totally Nimbyism but rather an opportunity to keep affordability and inclusion at the forefront of the development mix before once again having to wonder "how the hell did this happen under our watch". ..jus sayin.

[15895]

I wouldn’t want low income housing introduced into my neighborhood if given a choice even though I know the benefits to the community and upward mobility would be great.

 

There are plenty of folks who use coded racism but I don’t think it’s any of us here. And I think race is beyond irrelevant to what’s being discussed right now. Nobody likes their neighborhoods changing demographically (Income wise). I’m sure residents of Cherry, for example, don’t like big expensive houses being thrown up block by block not because they hate white people, but because now their prop. Taxes sky rocketed, etx

Were I lower income, id prefer my little neighborhood be spared too much gentrification and if higher the income, i would want less lower income forced By the gubmint. It’s hypocritical and self-serving but we all have our own interest and it’s not fair to just call people racist. Especially those who are probably your allies (AKA urban areas in general)

 

Edited April 29, 2018 by AirNostrumMAD

[Hunted]

6 hours ago, Durhamite said:

We all know the "code" words for poor or working class Black which quite frankly  isn't  synonymous with crime no matter how the media  portrays it.  

I feel like you just called me racist when all I did was acknowledge the fact that people lower on the socioeconomic spectrum, regardless of race, are much more inclined to commit crimes. The media coverage of crime has no bearing on this fact. You're actually the one who brought race into this, not me. I was just pointing out a sociological truth that holds true for people of all races around the entire world.

I could cite endless statistically-backed evidence that demonstrates how people with lower income are more inclined to commit crimes if you feel like being completely shut down. Regardless of your misguided thought, crime VERY MUCH SO has a massive disparity by race, if you want to go down that route.

[Hunted]

1 hour ago, Seabrooke said:

What is your suggestion we do instead of incorporating affordable housing, sweep low income people under the rug by building large ghettos and isolate them from the economic centers of our community?  Gentrify them out to Pineville or Gastonia? 

If you were to maybe volunteer with a church or a charity and get involved with your community and visit a disabled person or someone in need and learn about their experience, you may not be so inclined to lump all of these people into a statistic and make the generalition that crime would increase. I can share countless studies that indicate low income housing, when designed and managed correctly, does not coorelate with an increase in crime but actually decreases crime. 

As for your last comment about showing countless studies about how race is an indicator for crime level, why don’t you include the statistical data of which races had a right to higher education throughout the past 100 years, which races were enslaved and then given crap jobs for decades while fighting for their rights and living in a dystopian world where they were not equal. Maybe how government agencies introduced crack to their communities. Your white privileged post has literally sickened me.

Response to the 1st paragraph: I never claimed to have a solution or a suggestion, but I'm seeing a slippery-slope argument on your end. Somehow this office building results in people in ghettos being beyond the reach of an economic center that Elizabeth provides? You're reaching.

Response to the 2nd paragraph: Perhaps private housing for the disabled would decrease crime, but not public housing. It's just simply not true.

Response to the 3rd paragraph: Right to a higher education from decades ago somehow means someone who wasn't born then will commit a crime today? Everything you're saying is an elaborate cop-out to avoid taking responsibility for one's own actions. How long into the future will this excuse be viable? Are we going to make the excuse that crack was introduced into their communities in the 1980's when it's the year 2100? At some point, the responsibility is on the user's lap. The white-privilege card is most often pulled to counterbalance and justify underachieving. Excuse me for not wanting to blame the CIA for introducing crack in the 80's for someone who picked up a pipe in 2018.

Trust me, I'm the LAST GUY you want to pull the white privilege card on. I've been in jail multiple times. I've been homeless. NOTHING about my upbringing was privileged. How did I get out of all of that? Education. Valuing education is the first step. It had absolutely nothing to do with my skin color. You're not going to even begin the journey until that becomes a part of your life. Culturally, certain races, in aggregate, don't generally value education as much as others. In fact, due to affirmative action, blacks actually have a significantly higher chance of getting into prestigious universities. Harvard's black enrollment exceeds the national percentage of black population.

Asian-Americans and Eastern Indians BY FAR have more Ph.D.s per capita and, on average, record the highest SAT scores. These are first and second generation citizens. How are they doing this? Simple. They're of a culture that places a high emphasis on education. Stop making excuses for the underachievers (regardless of race). It's a total cop-out and it's horsesh*t in 2018.

Your white guilt and excuse-making post has figuratively sickened me.

 

[15895]

1 hour ago, Seabrooke said:

What is your suggestion we do instead of incorporating affordable housing, sweep low income people under the rug by building large ghettos and isolate them from the economic centers of our community?  Gentrify them out to Pineville or Gastonia? 

If you were to maybe volunteer with a church or a charity and get involved with your community and visit a disabled person or someone in need and learn about their experience, you may not be so inclined to lump all of these people into a statistic and make the generalition that crime would increase. I can share countless studies that indicate low income housing, when designed and managed correctly, does not coorelate with an increase in crime but actually decreases crime. 

As for your last comment about showing countless studies about how race is an indicator for crime level, why don’t you include the statistical data of which races had a right to higher education throughout the past 100 years, which races were enslaved and then given crap jobs for decades while fighting for their rights and living in a dystopian world where they were not equal. Maybe how government agencies introduced crack to their communities. Your white privileged post has literally sickened me.

 

 

Its off topic and not really relevant as no one here is a racist. No one here is close to a racist.  So not really sure what your probz is.

[Hunted]

I think accusing people of being able to benefit simply because of the color of their skin (which in no way have I) while implying that that benefit simultaneously serves as a detriment to others is totally racist. 

Also, it is in fact actually MORE harmful to the black community to write off all shortcomings as a result of white privilege. As long as the justification of underachieving is always there, the incentive to progress will be completely absent. Taking responsibility and holding yourself accountable for your own actions would serve as the driving force to uplift and motivate. So, Seabrooke, keep believing that. You're doing more harm than good.

I went from absolutely nothing to something from nothing more than shifting my attitude and outlook on life. Skin color played zero part in it. There's no reason others can't do the same. You assumed you knew something about me and weren't even close to hitting your target.

[Hunted]

15 minutes ago, Seabrooke said:

1. You offer no solution, but again you don’t want affordable housing in “your neighborhood” which is basically saying you want ghettos where low income people live and keep the crime in their neighborhoods instead of “yours”. I never said I wanted it for this project, I’m simply saying that your assumption that everyone wants to eliminate affordable housing in the general area that they live is just wrong. 

3. If you are suggesting that an education and access to hire wages was your remedy to your homelessness and multiple incarcerations, then I find it comical that this conversation originated with you asking if you were the only person who didn’t want affordable housing in “your” neighborhood in relation to the neighborhood containing the regions largest community college

1 - Correct. Now you're getting it. Let me guess, it's "white privilege" if I don't want crime in my neighborhood? HOW DARE I not want to live in a crime-ridden neighborhood?! I'm so privileged.

2 - First of all, why are we pretending like this community college is on an island surrounded by alligator-infested waters that only Elizabeth residents have access to? Also, why are we pretending like formal education is the only form of education? Also, why are we pretending like race determines economic status?

I really don't think anything you've said so far makes sense. You're trying to funnel me into validating your narrative and it's failing miserably. 

12 minutes ago, Seabrooke said:

If you state you don’t want affordable housing in your neighborhood because of its correlation to crime, and then state that you have statistics that show certain races are more inclined to crime than others, then you are stating you don’t want low income members of those races in your neighborhood and you want to somehow price them out. That’s racist, whether you feel it’s justified by data or not.

It's racist to not want crime in your neighborhood?

LOL dude, you're done. Just stop. You're letting some serious accusations fly here. 

[Hunted]

1 minute ago, Seabrooke said:

Lol dude, you’re right I am done. Not because you have told me I am done, but because this is way off topic. As for me trying to get you to validate my narrative, that was not my intention. I just really wanted you to clarify your stance, so I can state this:

You called that lady a NIMBY. Not sure if you know what that actually means. It is a derogatory term for someone who objects to something perceived as dangerous being built in their own neighborhood while raising no objections for it being built elsewhere.

I’m not into name calling, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. That is all.

 

NIMBY offends you? You’re one of those safe space guys, aren’t you?

[KJHburg]

Since there is no real proposal for affordable housing in this area I suggest we start an Affordable Housing thread in coffeehouse to discuss further.  It is an important issue for this community that deserves a more thoughtful discussion.  

Here is the new topic I created lets take the discussion there please 

 

Edited April 29, 2018 by KJHburg

[15895]

2 hours ago, Seabrooke said:

If you state you don’t want affordable housing in your neighborhood because of its correlation to crime, and then state that you have statistics that show certain races are more inclined to crime than others, then you are stating you don’t want low income members of those races in your neighborhood and you want to somehow price them out. That’s racist, whether you feel it’s justified by data or not.

Race. Was. Not. Mentioned. Nor. Implied

 

. 

Im a gay latino boy. And I was in/am in the same situation as Hunted. Homeless, very poor, etc but I graduate in May with a high paying job lined up for June. Zero help other than staying with various grindr boys. 

 

I don’t feel like we should all have to post our racial, minority and social statuses to prove to a white guy in a flannel shirt we aren’t a bunch of white supremacist elitist.... lol

Edited April 29, 2018 by AirNostrumMAD

[JacksonH]

9 hours ago, Hunted said:

I feel like you just called me racist when all I did was acknowledge the fact that people lower on the socioeconomic spectrum, regardless of race, are much more inclined to commit crimes. The media coverage of crime has no bearing on this fact. You're actually the one who brought race into this, not me. I was just pointing out a sociological truth that holds true for people of all races around the entire world.

I could cite endless statistically-backed evidence that demonstrates how people with lower income are more inclined to commit crimes if you feel like being completely shut down. Regardless of your misguided thought, crime VERY MUCH SO has a massive disparity by race, if you want to go down that route.

You should have quit while you were ahead.  You were doing a fine job of defending yourself, but then had to slip in that last sentence which only served to demonstrate that Durhamite had busted your code.

Edited April 30, 2018 by JacksonH

[Norm2]

I think that SO much of this conversation on racism and classism should just be deleted.....

[dubone]

MOD NOTE: Please return as much as possible to a civil tone and steer off of inflammatory topics unless you can clear the air quickly.     

 

An office building has been proposed and some people in the nearby neighborhoods are opposed to it and want it to be their opportunity to make it everything they ever wanted on that spot.   This literally happens for every dense urban project and is the reason we ended up with a pink Arlington.          

[Crucial_Infra]

30 minutes ago, dubone said:

MOD NOTE: Please return as much as possible to a civil tone and steer off of inflammatory topics unless you can clear the air quickly.     

 

An office building has been proposed and some people in the nearby neighborhoods are opposed to it and want it to be their opportunity to make it everything they ever wanted on that spot.   This literally happens for every dense urban project and is the reason we ended up with a pink Arlington.          

Confessing my unpopular opinion: I like the pink Arlington now. It's bizarre but adds a little something to certain skyline shots. Every city has some crap like that. Should've been taller obviously  *This is my only bad opinion* 

Edited April 30, 2018 by Crucial_Infra

[Hunted]

2 hours ago, JacksonH said:

You should have quit while you were ahead.  You were doing a fine job of defending yourself, but then had to slip in that last sentence which only served to demonstrate that Durhamite had busted your code.

Fair enough. I just didn’t appreciate the left-field racist accusation and the white privilege comment from a guy who knows nothing about me. I’ll end it on that note. Back to the topic.

[NcSc74]

I had a long reply typed up but nah.  I'll just say, racism no matter if its apparent or hidden exist and is alive and well in this great country.  No stats neededfor that.  And the AA community does needs to take some responsibility, play catch up and build wealth within its own community instead of always searching for a cause and leader.  Secondly, affordable housing is necessary for healthy city.  My old man told me a while ago never live your life always in the extremes moderate and find natures balance.  I think Charlotte should do the same. 

[Jasons0013]

Reading this thread like...

[SgtCampsalot]

While I will side-step the above discussion, I do have an anecdote that gave me a much more complicated, nuanced perspective of these kinds of things:

At a recent rezoning public meeting in a primarily African-American community with many seniors and lower income residents, the petitioner wanted to develop a vacant corner lot with three apartments in one building, and two townhomes in another. One of the townhomes would be sold at 80% AMI.

Many newer residents did feel it was appropriate, in that it would add even more to the housing stock, and avoid having yet another 5,000 sq ft SFH getting built, which would further add to the property tax burden of lower income residents.

The curve ball was that the long-time African-American residents were concerned that it would start a precedent for developers to easily put any tall structure they want next door to their single-family homes (much like 3rd Ward's new mid-rise buildings), thus lowering their own property values (a pervasive perspective I feel is built in the post-WWII development pattern of huge apt complexes). But also they had very personal, emotional responses to the fact that larger structures made them feel more pushed out, more marginalized, than they already do by the huge SFHs.

In response to the argument that these apts/townhomes are better than the huge SFHs, they said "but those houses are already here, and we can't stop them from building them, but we can at least stop these now."

We tend to think of wealthy white homeowners, or generally comfortable middle-class, or rural homeowners, in SFHs when we think of NIMBYs and opposition to denser development of any kind. But the fact that African-American residents, who were specifically saying they were worried about their most vulnerable friends, family, and neighbors, would rather have huge, $500k luxury McMansions be built next door to them than smaller (and cheaper) townhomes/apartments because of the fear of density - because they fear they would be even MORE exclusionary to them than luxury SFHs - blew my mind. It showed me that there are no easy, obvious stereotypes in these matters.

There are nuances and personal perspectives that will always color, and even misconstrue, issues revolving around our communities. I think the only thing we can all do is try to acknowledge objectively what biases our perspective is giving us, and approach others who disagree in as authentic and compassionate a way as possible. It's really hard.

Edited April 30, 2018 by SgtCampsalot

[Nick2]

Hopefully the NIMBYs can be shown the legitimate benefits to this project. But it's more likely they'll irrationally be against it regardless.

This is the best project on this side of town in a long time. It would be a shame for a couple of people who can't handle change to hold it up or cause it to be cancelled.

[dubone]

Growth and change is complicated.   Typically, the groups that fight these rezonings do not want any investment near them that they can't control or fit into their daily lives.  A dense project in the heart of the city and on rail transit is absolutely better for the city than sprawl.    Density, however, often requires additional policing and other support  and infrastructure.  At the end of the day it is people's homes and neighborhoods and life savings at stake, and then the added issues of the legacy of institutional discrimination leading to complicated incentives for individuals to react to certain things.

Remember when Myer's Park people were up in arms about the greenways?   Pineville rejected a light rail station.   And there are plenty of projects have are now huge parts of the city that once had protests that were ignored.   People still complain about voting against the arena, despite how clear now how good of a decision building it turned out to be (and that hotel guests paid for it, etc.).       

A 20-ish story office tower is going to be a godsend for this section of Elizabeth which has pretty much stagnated over the past decade despite a lot of public investments.    

 

[Durhamite]

21 hours ago, Hunted said:

Fair enough. I just didn’t appreciate the left-field racist accusation and the white privilege comment from a guy who knows nothing about me. I’ll end it on that note. Back to the topic.

I know what you posted, that about sums it up.  I do know that people of a particular socio-economic status are more than likely to commit certain types of crimes (rich or poor), crime is crime.  And the extent of one's resources (racism and classism) usually dictate conviction rates in a tainted racket-driven criminal justice system that feeds off the bottom rung.  Just don't assume creating affordable housing means an infestation of Black street criminals, which in fact it doesn't.  Really, the state of things and hardline stereotypes aren't your fault but trying to weasel out of how you phrased  it is.  Now, back to the regularly scheduled program about Nimbyism and whether or not this thing will get built.

[Hunted]

1 hour ago, Durhamite said:

Just don't assume creating affordable housing means an infestation of Black street criminals, which in fact it doesn't. 

Comically ironic being that you were literally the one who assumed that. I simply said, “crime.” You made it a race issue off of your assumption. But yes, back to the topic.

 I wasn’t going to say anything else, but GOD, I couldn’t resist this one.

[Durhamite]

12 hours ago, Hunted said:

Comically ironic being that you were literally the one who assumed that. I simply said, “crime.” You made it a race issue off of your assumption. But yes, back to the topic.

 I wasn’t going to say anything else, but GOD, I couldn’t resist this one.

Still in denial about combining the terms "low-income" + "crime", maybe you meant green Martians?  There's that weasel thing again...let it go and dress it a bit better moving forward.