Hey Kids, Bail Yourselves Out.
By Jim Conley • Dec 18th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Here’s what you won’t hear in the debate concerning a Proposition 2.5 over-ride for Brookline - the miserable job the town does in caring for low income children. Why? Because we’re in denial that they exist in our toney burb of million-dollar houses.
Wait a minute, I take it back. We will hear how special education costs drive up the town’s “operating deficit” with the implication being that needy families are a source of our fiscal woe. It’s what you’d expect from an elitist town government.
Want proof to the claim? Well, the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued a report last month that ranks Massachusetts as 50th out of the 50 states in meeting the needs of low-income children [see the report]. The reason? Heavily populated and affluent geographies do a lousy job of creating community to support those on the margin.
Hey, sounds like Brookline.
Take a look at the list of poor performing states - Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, for instance. The conclusion is inescapable. These are the places where people seek public office to “get some for themselves.” Hard to pay attention to the poor when that’s the agenda.
Update: And how callous do you have to be to burn $6 million in affordable housing trust funds on an ill-conceived housing project at St. Aidan’s? How much cynicism does it take to throw 16 low income units into a project (whose finances are predicated on selling million dollar condos within the same lot) and then, ultimately, blame the poor for the project’s poor finances?
Plenty, if you’re trying to keep affordable housing out of your neigborhood, as are members of the housing advisory board and Brookline Selectmen.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Our Selectmen might respond that Brookline has few low income children because of insufficient affordable housing. There may be a method to the Selectmen’s madness with respect to its $6 million investment in the St. Aidan’s Project after all, as their efforts do not seem to be getting the Project off the ground. But if in lieu of the affordable trust fund payments developers had been required to provide affordable units on their development sites, Brookline would have had a number of low income children residing here for a few years. So far the Selectmen’s policies have been effective in keeping down the number of low income children in Brookline and at the same time funding the purchase of the site and the developer’s legal and other soft costs. Is all this a miracle or a Brookline “Catch-22″?