No Veggie Gardens For Our Growing Underclass

Last week, I told you about a single mother whose car was stolen while she slept. Though she got it back, she had to pay a hefty storage and towing fee. If she wanted Allentown police to do what they presumably are paid to do, and actually try to solve the crime, she'd have to pay to keep it in storage even longer until they got around to sending a fingerprint team. This would be no trouble to many people who drive better cars with collision and comprehensive. They could just keep their rental and let police work at their leisure. But for the working poor, a crime like this will go unsolved.

This is not the exception, but the rule. Take, for example, the story of Mr. A, a 78 year old newspaper delivery man who was mugged in 2008 while delivering a newspaper to then Congressional candidate Sam Bennett's Allentown home. He was ignored by The Morning Call newspaper and police, even when he spotter his mugger at the Hotel Traylor lobby and called them. I guess he's not important enough.

I'm sure that most of you can tell me horror stories, too, especially in Allentown. Even in our approach to criminal justice, we are slowly becoming a nation intent upon keeping the working poor down. We discourage any attempt by people to dig their way out.

This is the problem noted by thinking conservatives like Vic Mazziotti, who question why we waste  $220,000 in federal funds for 1-BR apartments at Cumberland Gardens, when that money could be put to such good use in restoring the dilapidated housing in block after block of the Queen City. Thinking liberals in Northampton County actually agree that the entire system is broken.

It has nothing to do with ideology. It has everything to do with layer after layer of bureaucracy, from federal administrators to Allentown police.

Don't believe me?

Consider the story of a 4 year-old girl in South Dakota. She lives with her mother, who receives $628 a month on some sort of disability. They are in subsidized housing. The little girl decided to grow vegetables on some unused land next to the projects, and you'd think it was a crack house. The property management company has given her a week to take it down ... or else.

Although the feds are pointing to the property management company and the property management company is pointing at the feds, it is pretty clear that our system is increasingly becoming one that designed to prevent the poor from clawing their way out. It's not intentional. It's just what happens when bureaucracies become bloated and spend more time currying favor with power brokers than in attempting to do their job.

This is a criticism conservatives have made for years, but the bureaucratic backlash is always to assail them for hating the poor. Maybe the people who really hate the poor are those who spend $220,00 for a few 1-BR apartments while doing nothing about our real affordable housing problem. Maybe it's those who do nothing for the crime victims who can least afford the losses they suffer.