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Where Will The Poor Go?

Where Will The Poor Go?

Last updated on: May 17, 2017 at 1:20 am by Mary Pezzulo

Where Will The Poor Go? 2017-05-17T01:20:19-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Today, a friend told me that there’s a new “initiative” in the neighborhood, to ban rental houses so that poor people “on assistance” won’t be able to move in here. I don’t know yet if it’s true. I was horrified but not surprised. I’ve written about this neighborhood before– it’s quite a poor neighborhood until right up against the cliff that separates it from downtown. That road along the cliff, and the block or two radiating from it, is where the wealthy and middle-class people live. Most of them are Catholic; many work at the university. They’re always trying to do whatever they can to keep us away, for “safety” and to drive up the value of their homes.

I am used to being thought of as unsafe. When I first came here, I tried to get along with my fellow Catholics, but I quickly realized that all but a few of them think I’m a horrible person and unsafe. I’m grateful for those few, but they can’t shield me from the others. The others say they hope I don’t vote and talk about how uncomfortable for them it is, for people like me to be in the neighborhood. They want their children to play on perfect streets with other children who are just like they are, free from contamination by any other cultures. They want to be surrounded by people who are middle or upper middle class, Catholic, economically libertarian, staunchly Republican, with four or more children all named traditionalist virtue-signaling names like “Gianna” and a plaster statue of Our Lady of Grace on the lawn. Anyone else is unsafe. As a poor Catholic “on assistance,” who only managed to have one child, who isn’t a Republican or an economic libertarian, and who likes icons better than plaster statues, I’m unsafe.

All the poor people on “assistance” are unsafe, and ought to be pressured out of the neighborhood, according to these people. If this “initiative” isn’t real or doesn’t pass, they’ll think of another way. For the safety of the children, and for the increased value of their homes. The poor on “assistance” have to go.

I wonder where they think the poor will go.

A gentleman told me once that the reason there are so many poor people here in this part of town, is that the City closed one half of the public housing apartments, the ones up near the university. So the poor people with Section Eight vouchers migrated here, to rental houses on the hilltop. I don’t know if it’s true, but it sounds like something that would happen.

I wonder where the poor will migrate to if the middle-class Catholics manage to get their own way.

Maybe they’ll all move downtown.

But there is a small community of upper-middle-class Catholics living downtown, as well. What if they don’t want any poor people?