TU Editorial


By DIA, Section News
Posted on Sun Nov 11, 2007 at 06:02:31 AM EST

Today's editorial about Mayor Jennings' latest press event regarding the vacant building problem in Albany (no questions were allowed at this "press event").
``This operation is designed for high impact,'' Mr. Jennings said Thursday.

His press conference certainly was designed that way. The mayor reached out to a longtime ally, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who sees neglectful landlords as a plague afflicting the cities of all of upstate New York. Mr. Jennings also has wisely sought the help of Albany County District Attorney David Soares.

But then this mayor has always been good at pronouncements and promises. What he needs to do now is answer some reasonable questions. Somehow, Mr. Jennings managed to conclude his presentation Thursday without saying where he'll get the money to pay for what amounts to a war on blight. At the very least, the city ought to increase the standard $5,000 assessment placed on abandoned buildings. That's so low it's an incentive, in essence, for landlords to hold on to property without maintaining it, in the hopes they eventually can sell dilapidated buildings at a nice profit.

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TU Editorial | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
Another Operation IMPACT (none / 0) (#1)
by TerryONeillEsq on Tue Nov 13, 2007 at 12:50:55 PM EST
As a thirty-year resident of downtown Albany, I appreciate the State Attorney General taking an interest in my neighbors in our more distressed neighborhoods.  

I'd caution that going after delinquent and absentee landlords, code enforcement, street-repair and the like is a strategy of continuing to avoid the real problem. The reason several neighborhoods in Albany are blighted by abandoned and decrepit buildings is that we have not invested in the people who live in them. Programs like the AG's No Place to Hide and Mayor Jennings'Block by Block are a continuation of a colossal  publicly-funded program that has driven them deeper into poverty and disenfranchisement.

In those neighborhoods, there is a population of people who have been the target of some forty long and implacable years of our being tough on crime and drugs. Virtually every family has sent one or more members to prison.  Those families stand very little chance of becoming homeowners, business proprietors and otherwise successful contributors to the community.

Boston Globe writer Christopher Shea recently observed that the last time America had a public program of such historic scale and human impact it was called the New Deal.  It lifted millions out of poverty and destitution. Now we are driving even more millions into worse because the damage done one generation by our penal policy extends down through many more.

In the end, what is the point of going after landlords if all the sprucing up we squeeze out of them has no effect on the viability of the people who live in and among their properties, especially those who have been damaged through the experience of incarceration of themselves or a family member?

District Attorney David Soares has done a lot of speaking out about the serious and fundamental problem of transitioning thousands of prison inmates back into the community, into their families and into those run down and blighted neighborhoods. I certainly hope that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Jerry  Jennings took the opportunity they had to spend time with him at this press conferenceto give a good hard listen to what he has to say on the subject.   

TU Editorial | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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