I was at a meeting of the Allied Drive Task force and was amazed when one of the Assistant City Attorneys explained how excited she was that after the New Year she was going to be focusing on a bunch of nuisance abatements. Excited?
I was horrified. I’m thinking this is going to be 1999 on Broadway-Simpson all over again. (That would be Lakepointe for those of you who are new to town.) The City has a history of bungling these actions and generally making the lives of innocent people pretty miserable and then blaming it on them. Of course, these families fit all the stereotypes and are typically poor, black, dealing with issues of disabilities in the family or other struggles in addition the the struggles of being poor in Madison. And despite promises to reform the process, we are doing the same things we did in 1999. We haven’t solved the underlying problems – check out where this person was supposed to move to in 1999 – none other than Allied Drive. There are still no or inadequate relocation costs provided to the tenants and the notices are still unreasonable. What would you do if you were suddenly given 28 days notice to move? We got a little taste of that with the recent Allied Drive evictions/non-renewals and I’m afraid that there are more to come.
Reading these old stories linked above made me wonder, how long before we change the name of Allied Drive? My guess is it will be called Willowpointe or Willow Way. And that’s the problem, we are repeating the mistakes we made with Broadway-Simpson and Vera Court and to some extent Darbo-Worthington. Closing down run-down properties and pushing people into different housing, renaming and “revitalizing” neighborhoods yet creating new pockets of poverty and calling renovated areas improved because no one who used to live there lives there now is not success. We need to do better.
