…. who will live somewhere other than in Maine. “Maine’s open door for refugees meets a housing shortage” (Christian Science Monitor):
Yet the city [Portland, Maine] that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they are not allowed to work for a living as their appeals for asylum slowly crawl through the system.
Its shelter filled, the city has put them up in motels while COVID-19 and winter created vacancies. But now the innkeepers want their rooms back for tourists, and Portland has no place to put them.
And still they keep coming.
Portland’s city health director took the extraordinary step in May of emailing agencies working on the southern U.S. border, telling them that immigrants “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival” in the city. The adjoining municipality of South Portland sent a similar message, and 79 local aid organizations followed with letters to the state of Maine and the federal government saying they were stretched too thin.
Judging by real estate prices, Portland has never been wealthier. Apartments and single-family houses have been bid up to a median price of over $500,000 (Zillow). What stops people rich enough to pay $500,000 for an apartment from paying up to house their refugee brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters?
… most pushback is framed in terms of the cost of services to newcomers at a time of inflation and rising expenses, says Ms. West, the city manager. “When you increase taxes, that’s really difficult for a lot of people in Portland to handle,” she says.
Aha! As with California Progressives, housing is a human right, but so is a Progressive’s right to save Mother Earth by buying a new Tesla rather than funding housing for the unhoused (whose right to housing remains undiminished by their lack of housing).
Related:
Diversity, equity and inclusion demands that immigrants are located in prime real estate locations. It would make sense to charter a large cruise ship to deliver 7,000 Mexicans directly to Martha’s Vineyard.
I would donate to such a noble cause. It would be highly instructive to see what happens. Would a GoFundMe be frozen? Would Obama and Clinton call the coast guard?
If Abbott rejects migrants from Texas, he is the Great Satan. If he ships them to New York, he is “causing havoc” (NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/04/us/migrants-buses-washington-texas.html).
Surprised those in Portland haven’t figured out the obvious solution regarding their hotels. Look at what the great people in Los Angeles are contemplating. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-05/initiative-would-require-l-a-hotels-to-provide-rooms-to-homeless-people?_amp=true
This is beautiful: “hotels would be required to regularly report the number of vacant rooms they have to the city’s housing department.” Qualified comrades would make the proper allocation decisions.
Why not extend this plan and use that extra 1+ acre land that the woke have around their homes and let the government build additional homes for the homeless? I’m sure the the zoning laws can be changed in heartbeat to allow this.
Perhaps Maine could apply the same policy as Copenhagen: if a house is occupied less than 182 days a year, the owner must accept renters sent by the government. Who could object to the community enrichment from vacation mansions being utilized by those in need?
Anon: That would work out wonderfully because there are a lot of Progressives who somehow always end up in Florida for at least 183 days per year, thus avoiding Maine’s state income tax, and reserving the Maine place for 182 days or less. (I know some passionate Democrats who do this between Palm Beach County and Martha’s Vineyard; paying MA taxes is not an attractive option despite their stated passion for the kinds of services that the MA government provides.)
But where would those selected by the housing ministries go in the summer? I am envisioning the Progressives’ Colorado ski condos.
The answer is obvious. Los Angeles and stay in a free hotel room!
Got to keep debasing the currency to build more low income housing & call it an inflation reduction act.
I wonder if those immigrants are confusing Portland, Maine with Portland, Oregon. Usually immigrants tend to prefer places that already have their countrymen, and that’s how you end up with clusters in the unlikeliest of places.
Like rightwing nutjobs flocking to Florida?
Angry Australian: Since anyone would have to be a “nutjob” to vote for the Party of Insurrection (even though you’re visiting virtually from Australia, I have no doubt that the events of January 6, 2021 had a profound effect on you), I think the data support your conjecture.
https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/data-statistics/voter-registration-statistics/voter-registration-reports/voter-registration-by-party-affiliation/
shows that Florida was majority-Democrat prior to coronapanic and is now majority-Republican. Not only the realtors here, but also the Republican party functionaries are surely celebrating every lockdown order that was ever issued by a governor in the Northeast and Midwest!
Now that the real estate crash is imminent, I’m wondering if it would make sense for real estate owners in Florida to get together to support https://betoorourke.com/ in his/her/zir/their bid to bring the tax-and-spend-and-lockdown religion to Texas. If Florida could capture all of the Californians who have been escaping to Texas and driving up property values there we would not have to worry about any downturn.
Here’s Mx. O’Rourke noting that Governor Abbott could have prevented COVID-19 from killing anyone in Texas if he had only issued more mask and lockdown orders. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2021/03/02/greg-abbott-executive-orders-reopening-texas-businesses-covid/6893324002/
@Anonymous, is that you, the righteous offering one of your bedrooms at your home for an illegal immigrant family to settle in for the next 6-12 or more months till they are on their feet? Will you do the same for the next illegal immigrant family? Because if you are, I will donate to support your cause.
George: The above Anonymous has been retagged Angry Australian due to his/her/zir/their IP address. I think that, unfortunately, Australians are denied the opportunity to host the undocumented who are instead housed offshore on prison islands until they can be delivered to the United States under an agreement with Barack Obama. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Centre
[George: The above Anonymous has been retagged Angry Australian due to his/her/zir/their IP address. ]
Our host has a sense of humor.
If the poster used a VPN with Aussie IP address, it would be a funny double joke!
Viking: that would indeed be funny if this person turned out to have first-hand knowledge of the rightwing nutjobs of Miami Beach, but the IP address doesn’t map to a VPN provider. The reverse IP maps to a real enterprise in Australia.
Would it be possible to retag him “Angry Aussie”? I think it has a better ring to it.
Wow this is fun to watch! I vote for “Crocodile Dundee” of course. I realize my vote doesn’t count!
@Alex 1.0 Real Aussies are nervous wrecks from one/multiple parents households with ghastly military traditions https://newspunch.com/young-australian-navy-recruits-forced-to-rape-each-other/
Alex (1.0)…. better start working on knife control!
@Toucan Sam:
I’ll leave that to the Attorneys General of the People’s Republics of Massachusetts, Connecticut, NY, NJ and DE. They’re waaaaaaaay ahead of me. NH is going to be Living Free or Dying the same way pretty soon as well. What can be done?
I think the “switchblade” knife the would-be robber pulls in the video would be illegal in MA, no question about it. The MA laws are here, and it’s a dense read:
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/Partiv/Titlei/Chapter269/Section10
I actually think the knife Crocodile Dundee wielded in the movie is legal in MA right *now* but not in NYC, where the scene takes place. I’ll have to ask a prosecutor. A few words change in the law and nobody knows where they stand.
@Philip, why would you tag @Anonymous as @Angry Australian? S/He means well. The only issue I have with Anonymous is that s/he will talk-the-talk about helping illegal immigrants but will not offer to house them in his/her home.
Also, as your wiki link to Nauru Regional Processing Centre shows that the government of Australian Anonymous’s country doesn’t agree with his/her views and s/he never bothers to mentioned this in any of his/her posts but yet our Australian Anonymous poster seems to have issues with USA about how we deal with illegals. So I wonder if our Australian Anonymous is happy as long as illegal immigrants issues are not in his/her backyard. If so, then s/he is with agreement with us about illegals stays out of a country.
@ Alex (1.0) I just meant knife control as a means of always slashing your target! To quote the great Doug Marcaida “this knife will kill”.
@Alex 1.0, in the times that we live in now, the knife wouldn’t be an issue with the woke and authorities, the way the punks are being treat in the movie would.
@TS: Truth to tell, despite my firearms connection I’ve never been much of a “knife person.” I have a few, but they’re mostly utilitarian and there are a couple of cheap EDC knives.
I really like my Grik. It’s an inexpensive knife that is a bit weird looking, but the blade can be sharpened really well and it’s got a lot of nice features for “around the homestead or business” tasks.
You can find people on the internet like Nutnfancy who are at least 100x more “into knives” than I am. Spyderco crafts some very well-made and even beautiful “gentleman’s knives” but you have to get them before they run out. These are knives you can keep on your person even in a formal setting and not feel, er, like a gauche gorilla.
I didn’t get the Doug Marcaida reference (I’ll look him up.)
This is a nice, inexpensive but very functional EDC folder:
https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Steel-Knife-Black-Green/dp/B072591KK2
It looks a little weird at first but it ain’t after you’ve used it a few times.
@TS: BTW my initial attraction to the Grik, of course, is a kind of obscure tribute to “Grok” – coined by Heinlein in 1961. So I guess you could say that “I Grok My Grik.”
I wonder, though, if Australia intends to do with knives what it did to semiautomatic firearms: meaning – sure, you might own them. We know you’re not a criminal. But hand ’em over, because basically, pals and gals, you ain’t got no property rights where guns are concerned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok