Urban Bullets & Gov't Housing Projects
Dear National Post Editor,
A list of gunplay sites was published today. Morecambe, Chester Le, John Garland, etc -almost all these shooting sites are in extreme proximity to Government Housing Projects.
As a Realtor for over 25 years, I know the negative influence these centres of socio-economic non-prosperity have on the adjacent neighbourhoods' desirability and hence on property values.
In my view these artificial neighbourhoods create pools of Imperfectly-Supervised Youth (ISY). These ISY form friendships with like-minded (and similarly socio-economically raised) individuals to form bands-of-brothers type clubs for defensive & offensive, economic & social purposes.
Never mind all the noble, 'great society' reasons for why these projects were initially created, these buildings and complexes are NOW hot-beds of gang and gun violence.
I don't blame the kids - look at the 'urban gangster' models being portrayed on the music videos. Depiction of 'heroes' living glamorously outside of the law, in-your-face defiance of all authority, glorification of a drug, pimp, crime lifestyle ... gives these ISY crazy ideas about how THEY should live.
Divide and conquer! Break up the government housing projects and don't build any more - place a few families in each of the "regular" apartment buildings around town and subsidize individual landlords. Yes, run the future risk of "one in the barrel, spoiling the rest", the impact of current set-up is far worse RIGHT NOW!
Eliminate the artificial concentrations-of-ISY with the same "source of the problem" principles that have been applied to eradicating the West Nile Virus and we'll go a long way to interrupting further importation of the anti-societal values associated with this urban-underground lifestyle and the spread of dis-ease within the general population.
Robert Ede
A list of gunplay sites was published today. Morecambe, Chester Le, John Garland, etc -almost all these shooting sites are in extreme proximity to Government Housing Projects.
As a Realtor for over 25 years, I know the negative influence these centres of socio-economic non-prosperity have on the adjacent neighbourhoods' desirability and hence on property values.
In my view these artificial neighbourhoods create pools of Imperfectly-Supervised Youth (ISY). These ISY form friendships with like-minded (and similarly socio-economically raised) individuals to form bands-of-brothers type clubs for defensive & offensive, economic & social purposes.
Never mind all the noble, 'great society' reasons for why these projects were initially created, these buildings and complexes are NOW hot-beds of gang and gun violence.
I don't blame the kids - look at the 'urban gangster' models being portrayed on the music videos. Depiction of 'heroes' living glamorously outside of the law, in-your-face defiance of all authority, glorification of a drug, pimp, crime lifestyle ... gives these ISY crazy ideas about how THEY should live.
Divide and conquer! Break up the government housing projects and don't build any more - place a few families in each of the "regular" apartment buildings around town and subsidize individual landlords. Yes, run the future risk of "one in the barrel, spoiling the rest", the impact of current set-up is far worse RIGHT NOW!
Eliminate the artificial concentrations-of-ISY with the same "source of the problem" principles that have been applied to eradicating the West Nile Virus and we'll go a long way to interrupting further importation of the anti-societal values associated with this urban-underground lifestyle and the spread of dis-ease within the general population.
Robert Ede
posted by Walk a Kb or Two in my cassins | 10:29 am
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