While this is really great news, it still shoves the base problems right under the rug again.
1. Most all of our major employers in the area pay poverty level wages. It is nearly impossible for blue collar workers to get by.
2. The biggest shell game (or...scam, corruption, farce, boondoggle, etc. etc...) that there is in our region is deed-restricted housing. Tied up in that mess are similar corrosive problems with local governments, large real estate developments, financial institutions, powerful departments and boards.
It isn't just the folks living in deed-restricted housing that are caught in that web. All free enterprise and a major chunk of public dollars and tax credits are caught up in it as well.
Why is it that our favorite local newspaper isn't tying up all the connecting dots on these stories?
Andrew Travers:
"Members of a regional group devoted to preventing homelessness in the valley has raised concern about recent eviction actions by the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA).
The Regional Homeless Coalition, a group of two dozen health and human services workers from Aspen to Parachute, is poised to address how local government may be contributing to homelessness in the Aspen area.
The group is scheduled for a biannual meeting in El Jebel on Monday. They recently added the APCHA issue to their agenda. Housing authority qualifications specialist Julie Kieffer will attend the meeting on behalf of APCHA.
Vince Savage, director of the Aspen Homeless Shelter, asked coalition members last week to act on the issue.
Savage and the board overseeing the local homeless shelter discussed the evictions at a March 21 meeting. His board opted to hand the issue to the regional group, rather than take on the housing authority themselves.
“The [Aspen Homeless Shelter] board is concerned but feels it is more properly addressed by the Homeless Coalition as a concern for preventing homelessness, and the systemic problems that make Aspen less than a friendly community regarding housing issues,” Savage wrote to coalition members...."
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"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."
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