Yesterday I was out for my daily walk along Palisade Avenue in Jersey City when I heard sounds 50 yards ahead of me I had never experienced before: Tires screeching on asphalt; a thump; crushing metal. Ahead of me people leapt out of their cars and from their porches. A cop on his lunch hour bolted from his parked cruiser with a sandwich still in his hand.
Over the last 12 months there have been seven murders within a one block radius of where I live in the Jersey City Heights neighborhood. These killings, I have discovered, are an unfortunate part of the fabric of living in Jersey City.
The incredible shrinking Newark urban core is disappointing, fascinating and understandable from an economic opportunity point-of-view.
On May 1, 2005, the New York Times reported the following:
“Shereef Cheatham, a single mother of four, had been waiting five years for a rent assistance voucher when the Newark Housing Authority diverted $3.9 million in federal funds from the program in 2003 to pay for property near a proposed hockey arena downtown. She is still waiting.
Millions of dollars have been diverted from providing affordable housing for the urban poor in favor of building self-interests in the inner city. The New York Times continues to unveil the Newark disgrace:
More than 21,000 people were on the waiting list for the vouchers when the housing authority used the $3.9 million, a small portion of the total budgeted, to buy 12 privately owned lots. The purchase came after a lawsuit thwarted the city’s plan to seize them through condemnation. Those lots were crucial to building the arena, which was at the time intended to be the home for both the New Jersey Devils hockey team and the New Jersey Nets basketball team. The arena, now for the Devils alone, is scheduled to open in 2007.”
The beat goes on but someone is needed to end the beating of the poor in the urban core.
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