This weekend Alan Jennings has an editorial in the paper about affordable housing, and landlording in Allentown. One would hardly know that the other week when I appeared on Jennings' radio show, Lehigh Valley Discourse, he brushed by my experience as a city center landlord. Instead, Alan wanted to complain about Trump, never mind that we have our own issues here in the valley. In light of his editorial this week, it may have been a lost opportunity. I say may have been, because Alan wouldn't have agreed with my take on the problem, and never has since 2005.
In 2005, when I ran as an independent candidate for mayor, I said that Allentown was becoming a poverty magnet. As a landlord I saw how many people were being staked to move-in money by various social agencies in the valley. Thousands and thousands of people moved here whose career is exploiting Social Security Disability, the job market was never a factor for them. Those with that career are transient, with low and skipped rent deciding which town they move to, and for how long they stay. That was a very politically incorrect observation at the time, and is still a very sensitive issue. However, what isn't debatable is that Allentown has become a much poorer city in the last 15 years. In a sense, Alan is in the poverty business. Needless to say he still has social engineering recommendations, now about what should be done in 2018, to better the situation. I could dissect them point by point, but let me instead make just one observation. In reality there is no lack of affordable housing in Allentown, or there would not be so many low income people moving here. I do not believe that enlarging and making that segment of the rental market more attractive benefits Allentown in the long term.
Typical conservative blaming sick people for poverty.
ReplyDeleteOne would think there would be a learning curve for liberals on this issue but there simply isn't. Allen has been working on the poverty issue all his life and his only accomplishment has been to concentrate it in Allentown. Of course this works fine for the surrounding communities that are now by and large spared the pathologies associated with poverty but the poor themselves are now basically ghettoized in a dysfunctional city with a school district swamped by over 85% of it's students listed as officially poverty level.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what Allen's deal is with the paper plate, studies show obesity is a big problem in low income communities. As one who lives in one of the poorest zip codes in the nation 18102, I can write that my experience is that if children are going hungry it is because of parental neglect rather than a lack of government and private food assistance that is readily available around here.
By the way, it's very hard to see a photo of Allen or read any of his op-eds without thinking of his willful long term collaboration with a plainly corrupt mayor. That is a stain that will never go away, and it has irrevocably diminished his credibility.
ReplyDeleteAllen Jennings, a leftest blowhard, never had to work a day in his meager life. His crusade for the poor has ran its course but still gets unwarranted media coverage despite his failed attempts at trying to rectify things in Allentown. He should stay away from any public forum and should donate his large salary to the poor. Maybe then I'll listen to his pleas!
ReplyDeleteThis thing along with it coconspiritors made Allentown the poverty magnet it has become. Now it is blaming slumlordians for swooping in for a cash grab on uninhabitable blight. Its friends that have help incubate the areas fact of life are the one from a higher level reaping the benefits of this cash grab from the natives as well as the imports for local banking institutions help ping blight fester.
ReplyDeleteWe used to call people like Jennings poverty pimps
ReplyDeleteAs any educated person knows, the vast majority of those on the dole in its various forms are white, but refer to chiselers as the dependent class, and leftists will screech "racist" as a means of trying to prevent one from using such an obvious and descriptive term.
ReplyDeleteIt goes without saying that the core of Allentown's many problems is its surfeit of welfare recipients of the dependent class and its grossly inadequate cadre of net taxpayers of the productive class. That, of course, is simple arithmetic, and, in-and-of-itself, implies no value judgement.
So your phrase, "whose career is exploiting Social Security Disability" is refreshingly direct and honest.
What is most disturbing is that we are below what economists call the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) for one of the very few times since WWII (to the point that the Fed has had to bump interest rates to combat wage-push inflation), and yet the ranks of the dependent class seem not to be diminishing at all. Moreover, with the possible exception of the mythical Millennials occupying the largely dark Strata Flats, net taxpayers seem not to be flocking to Allentown in any meaningful numbers. Why would they? A few linear blocks of a crony "capitalism" financed Potemkin Village is certainly going to have little draw in the face of Allentown's massive dysfunction, crime, and fiscal collapse.
It occurs to me that few seem to have any objection to the forced redistribution of the income of hard working families of the productive class on the soviet model (mugging with the greatest glee the hardest working and most productive among them). Why, then, would anyone object to the geographic redistribution of welfare recipients more homogeneously across the state? Allentown is forced to warehouse so very many while other more fortunate PA municipalities play host to so very few.
Such a redistribution would have numerous laudable effects. First, no one school district would be as overwhelmed as Allentown's. We owe such an action to our next generation on that basis alone. Also, it would reduce the sort of critical mass that makes Allentown so susceptible to gangs, violence, and massive drug abuse. Finally, aloof leftists in areas such as the Main Line may grow less tolerant of those "whose career is exploiting Social Security Disability" if forced to live cheek-to-jowl with a significant number of them as we do in Allentown, and may then be made enlightened enough to finally support real reform.
Such a plan cold be easily implemented by simply dividing all welfare money equally among counties. If one wants to collect state controlled welfare funds (though, alas, this would not include SSI disability itself, but those abusing that program are generally abusing all programs) in a county that has reached its max, it would be necessary to move to a county that hasn't. Hence, the sort of saturation Allentown is experiencing to its detriment would be greatly reduced.
It seems unlikely, however, that the state would enact any legislation to implement such an idea, and the feds will be of no help at all. So, where does Allentown go from here?
It is generally my preference not to comment, or go back and forth with those that do. However, there are a couple things I would like to clarify. It is a coincidence that both my friday and monday posts concern alan jennings. I feel that his organization taking over farmer training is absurd, and furthermore i object to the lehigh county commissioners entertaining such nonsense as the Seed Farm and even Farmland Preservation.
ReplyDeleteToday's post is a reaction to Jennings' editorial. In addition to Jennings not asking for my informed opinion about center city housing (I was a center center rental agent for 35 years) allow me to note his access to the editorial page. I have no doubt that his submissions are accepted immediately, and published in prime time. Others such as myself are virtually barred.
All that said, I have respect for Alan Jennings, even if i differ about many of his programs. I find him sincere. He is very adept at his mission. He has always been courteous towards me despite my criticism. Over the years he has periodically reached out to explain his point of view, and listen to mine.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteAlan Jennings has a sincere and very loyal relationship with Ed Pawlowski. He apparently was also sincerely uninterested in preventing or speaking out against ED effectively ending the Systematic Rental Inspections program that he himself advocated and fought for. Ending that program was a disaster for the poor and the neighborhoods they call home. The very people and causes he claims to be an advocate for. Sorry to be so Frank, but although Alan is a fellow human being, very likely a decent man in his personal relationships, his public life, what we are discussing here is open to debate as it should be. He has made big mistakes, public ones, and yet presumes to lecture others about poverty and it's related issues. Sorry Alan, thanks to your own deeds you are no longer a credible spokesperson for that cause.
When I left Allentown in 1971 (after graduating from Penn State), it was a decent place. I understand with the loss of manufacturing jobs, there was economic collapse.
ReplyDeleteThe poor people who flocked to Allentown are the ones who have ruined it. It is a perverse idea that we should build 'affordable' housing - to encourage these people? Consider why they are poor: uneducated, low/no skills, out of wedlock births, can't speak the language. They have become poor, because of poor judgement. They are here for entitlements.
I say let the free market forces decide what will happen. Gentrification would be good. It will bring quality people, and drive out the poor, and criminal element.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI will certainly attest to to your record as a landlord who ran good buildings and maintained them, sought good tenants and responded to complaints from neighbors with courtesy.
We missed you when you sold your building on our block.
Now I have some time I'd like to share my thoughts on Mr Jennings and what he represents.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and myself both graduated from William Allen in the 1980s and met in Philadelphia in the 1990s. We didn't know each other at Allen, graduated in different years. We had a choice in 2009 when we moved from southern Montgomery County to be closer to our parents in Allentown. We could have moved to the West End (nearly bought a home near the Rose Garden), or move to the suburbs. Ironically, it was our parents who advised us to look in the suburbs; even though we wanted to move closer to them for my daughter. That and they were getting up in years and wanted to be closer.
Nearly a decade has passed and the decision we made to live in the suburbs has become the best choice. My daughter is getting a far better education in public schools at Upper Perk than she would have at William Allen. She has an experience similar to the one my husband and I had now that she's in high school. My mom lives with us now as my dad has passed. Our old house on Linden Street near West Park is sold. My huband's parents still live on Greenleaf near Cedar Crest and it's only a short drive up there to visit. Allentown however, is nothing as I remember it. Everything is either run down or changed or gone over the past 30 years. The generations that lived in the city in the past are no longer. Kids I went to school with had their parents and grandparents also go to William Allen, or Allentown High School..
We may be from Allentown, but it's really no longer our city any longer. Mr Jennings represents what went wrong in Allentown. Yes, I understand well the economics have changed from what they were to what they are now. Manufacturing is gone, most retail is gone except for gas stations and supermarkets and car dealers. The vast majority of residents are either elderly or lower middle class economically. Public assistance is a prime source of income for many residents, and the majority of residents of central Allentown are from somewhere else. The long-term residents have either moved out or died off who built the city I remember. Mr Jennings is an advocate for the lower class that now dominates.
Allentown today reminds me of places I knew about in New Jersey, like Camden and Newark, not the one I grew up in.
Democrats / Progressives / Community Organizers are all about one thing: Controlling us, and designing our lives the way they think it should be. People who work, pay taxes, take their kids to extracurricular activities - don't have time to go to city council meetings, or meetings that occur during working hours. Nobody advocates for the hard working taxpayers who have done the right thing: acquired an education / job skills, waited to get married, waited to have children. We are the ones that are supposed to pay - it's a completely bass-ackwards idea that rewards the slackers.
ReplyDeleteTheir solutions always involve 'investment' - AKA taxes - and programs. Remember the Soviets and their Seven Year Plans - see where that got them.
I want to be left alone, as I suspect many, many other similar people would like.