Living The Not-so-Wonderful Life in BestBuyTown

Okay, this is it, this is really it. Now I’ve officially heard everything but still have to write about it because I can’t wrap my head around the arrogance and absurdity of this latest fascist FUBAR.

For some reason, the greedy bureaucrats involved with turning the Crossroads at Penn apartments into the new Concierge luxury complex actually believed they could kick out the current residents, then make everything all right by giving them — are you ready for this one? — FREE PIE FOR THANKSGIVING!

That’s about as nutty as Mr. Potter from “It’s A Wonderful Life” giving George Bailey a fruitcake after destroying his life, along with his savings & loan. (Thank God that scene ended up on the cutting room floor.) Desserts simply cannot alleviate the pain of impending homelessness. That empty gesture of offering sugary carbs instead of viable solutions does speak volumes, though.

It shows how deeply, how embarrassingly out of touch the owners, landlords, managers, and powers-that-be really are when it comes to affordable housing in the 21st Century. NEWSFLASH: There isn’t any. And if you do happen to find some little domicile at a nice price, get ready to kiss it goodbye. Why? Because Our Urban Hometown — A.K.A. BestBuyTown — is on a mission to eradicate affordable housing here.

That’s the real kicker missing from the news story that “The Richfield Sun-Current” ran on Thursday, December 3, 2015. Conspicuously absent from the account of the city council meeting on November 24th was Richfield’s culpability in this massive resident displacement.

Let’s face it: The City of Richfield wants poor people to get out of town. They just don’t like poor people. Never have, never will. Never mind how hard they work at low-paying, go-nowhere jobs. Where they live — or so the city council believes, anyway — crime, violence, and prostitution will surely follow. Get rid of the poor, and you’ll get rid of these problems.

So what better way to drive out these low-lifes than by jacking up rental prices, restricting the number of family members per unit, then starting noisy renovations? Oh, and no more Section 8 vouchers, either.

See, we’re not really prejudiced against the poor. We’re only forcing them out on the streets because they can’t afford to live there any more. Hey we’re even giving them free pie!

Yum! Yum! Everybody loves pie. Especially if it’s free. Especially if they have no place to live where they can actually eat the pie.

With all the stringent state guidelines and federal mandates in place to supposedly protect low-income families from eviction, what happened with Crossroads at Penn never should have happened. But it did happen.

A corporation waltzed into Richfield, purchased a major apartment complex with plans to turn it into exclusive luxury apartment units. What was going to happen was well known beforehand — not just by the corporation and owners, but also by city officials. In fact, the city officials made it happen. Thanks to the cooperation of Richfield, laws designed to protect the disadvantaged fell by the wayside…just the way they did when Best Buy wanted to move in nearly 20 years ago and displace the homeowners and small businesses.

Hey, we don’t need to read the minutes from those secret meetings Richfield held with Best Buy and Concierge’s owners and renovators. We The People can see that the corporate headquarters across the street from the Concierge apartments belongs to Best Buy. Not Lutheran Brotherhood. Not Catholic Charities. Not H.U.D.

So let’s stop with the naiveté and start taking a hard look at Richfield’s latest fascist maneuver disguised as “urban renewal.” It isn’t. It’s just another way to serve the corporate masters at Best Buy AND fight poverty by banishing low-income people from Our Urban Hometown.

Thanks to our City Mothers, everything associated with creating the Concierge — the purchase, subsequent renovation, ousting of current residents, even ignoring protective rules currently in place — became a reality. Richfield cut away all the red tape and cleared the way to help Best Buy get its way. As usual. Because the greed of Big Business always trumps the need of residents here.

Best Buy wanted a big same-sex dorm for its employees, and Richfield wanted to clean house. So bye-bye, low-income families. Hello, upscale, single millennials.

That’s what really happened. And in this day and age, such civic irresponsibility is unconscionable.