Team Gary Doesn’t Know How to Count! The latest mantra of Team Gary/ the Karen Freeman-Wilson administration is that the city has over 10,000 vacant/abandoned houses. What! 10,000? Impossible! This would mean that every third house is vacant, abandoned, and in line to be demolished. This is just simply not true. In some twisted, perverse way, this administration, along with the “crack” team she boasts to have assembled, evidently thinks that by grossly inflating the count of derelict structures, the city is better served. Apparently this strategy was pulled from a rerun of an old Twilight Zone episode. How could this be a viable plan to any rational person? Does Gary have a significant problem with abandoned homes? Of course it does. But does it have 10,000 vacant/abandoned houses, all in need of demolition? Of course it does not! So while we all are sitting around waiting for Team Gary’s team of experts from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy to complete their “class project” of assessing the condition of the city’s housing stock to finish up, we decided to do a little survey of our own. And we DO know how to count. And we also do know how to drive up and down every street in the city. But oddly, we don’t count anywhere near what they do. Why do you suppose that is? Here is why: We counted homes that met certain physical factors. Quite simply, they had to be in very poor condition. They had to be judged to be beyond repair. Our count, depending upon exactly what criteria is applied, ranged from between 2800 to 3700 homes that should be demolished. So how could Team Gary’s house count be so far off? Here is how: They are not simply driving around and doing a physical inspection of properties; they are rating properties using something that they refer to as a “blight index”. So if a property meets enough of the criteria to rate high enough on their in-house blight index, it makes the cut to be added to their house count. They have created something called a “Site Evaluation Matrix” to determine if a house qualifies for this blight index. But to the average person, this same house may seem like it is simply a home in need of some repairs. Some of the homes that made it onto their list—the list of 10,000 plus—are occupied. They have families living in them. Why are they on the list? It seems that part of the perverse strategy is to make the problem seem so big, so unmanageable, that it can only be managed with the help of her pal, former Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley, and his study group from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Common folk from Gary need not apply! So to reiterate, the 10,000 number is a lie--an intentional lie. The number is grossly inaccurate, and I am still at a loss to see whom this intentionally inaccurate number actually serves. The following is excerpted from a Post-tribune story that was published on May 27th, 2014: With an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 abandoned homes in the city, Freeman-Wilson acknowledged that the planned demolition is just a start to the process of revitalizing the city. So the Mayor is making statements that have a margin of error of 5000 abandoned houses? This is far more than there are in total! So how do we know this number is a lie and is grossly inaccurate? Let’s run down some basic math: According to census data from 2010, there are somewhere between 38,000 and 39,000 total housing units in the city of Gary. According to the garbage contract, there are around 21,000 residential units being served by Republic Industries now (Republic does not serve multi-units with more than four units). Also according to this census data, there are approximately 12,000 multi-family housing units (there will be some margin of error here because of the unknown number of 2-4-unit housing units; however, the vast majority of multi-unit housing units are 5 units and higher). Additionally, there are approximately 1000 mobile homes in the city. And then there are between 850-1000 other types of housing units to include: nursing homes, emergency housing, group homes, transitional housing, and residential treatment facilities. So if there are 10,000 vacant/abandoned structures in need of demolition in the city, this would imply that there are actually at least 45,000 residential housing units. This would mean that the census data in 2010 was wrong. (It would also not take into consideration that between 2010 and 2014 several hundred abandoned houses have been demolished.) This would also mean that one out of every three housing units was vacant/abandoned and ready for the wrecking ball. This is just not so! And for this administration, for this Team Gary, for this group of students from King Richard’s Harris School class to constantly imply this to the citizens and to the bloodthirsty national media that so insatiably laps this carnage up, is not only completely disingenuous, but it is highly destructive to the morale of the citizenry of the city of Gary. So when we did our abandoned house survey, we did it a little differently. First off, no one was required to have a Harvard degree. No one was required to have an MBA (or be in pursuit of one). No one was required to have any advanced degree in mathematics. We instead just found a few people with common sense. They had to know how to count. And they had to have a drivers license and a car. We divided the city into eight sections. Each person was responsible for two sections. The entire survey took 3 days. We canvassed every neighborhood in the city; probably some that the Harris students don’t even know exist. And our results were staggeringly different than the ones being proposed by the Harris School team. So much so, that I am going to characterize their results as patently false, intentionally deceptive, and seemingly the basis for a larger fraud. Now they are likely to come back and explain that there results do not mean that there are 10,000 vacant/abandoned houses in the city; they will likely now—now that they have been exposed—be quick to recant their results and tell us that there really are not (and never have been) 10,000 vacant/abandoned houses in Gary; but instead, that there are 10,000 houses that meet THEIR standards on THEIR blight index to be considered blighted according to THEM. There are not 10,000 vacant/abandoned houses in Gary. Not even close. Our survey, a survey that included every single street in the city, yielded dramatically different results. Depending upon what standard we used, our totals ran between 2900 and 3700 houses that should be considered possible candidates for demolition. This is still a significant number. Some of the houses that made it on our list could still be rehabbed. Only a relatively small percentage of these are the stereotypical burned-out or collapsing structures that we often imagine when we think of an abandoned house in Gary. But the 10,000 number that this administration has been recklessly tossing around and spoon-feeding every media outlet that they have the opportunity to meet is just another example of how grossly irresponsible they are. After all, what kind of public relations person or team would intentionally exaggerate this problem? How could this be a good strategy? It kind of reminds me of one of those people that hold the cardboard signs at the exit ramps in Chicago. “I am pitiful, so please give me money.” I don’t think that Gary needs pitiful leaders. Gary needs strong leaders. No society ever reached any level of success by living off of the beneficence of others. Especially a city with Gary’s history; Gary was once known the world over as being a place of innovation, of creativity, of industry. I think that it is quite embarrassing that she has been forced to now take on the role of a beggar. Gary will NOT rebound by assuming the role of a beggar, of becoming the state’s largest charity case. Gary will only rebound by again becoming a place of creativity, industry, and innovation. And lying about how bad off the city is in hopes of getting charity is NOT how we jump start creativity, industry, and innovation! 10,000 abandoned houses is a lie! It is a damaging lie. It is a lie that if allowed to, will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it is a lie today.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:49:54 +0000
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