Over the past few days, I've talked a little about how Kansas City has gotten into its current state of affairs. For the past 30 years people have been leaving the urban core: leaving a declining population of people to pay for infastructure, crime protection, codes enforcement, public transportation, etc.
Meanwhile, many in the urban core's situation has become more dire, because they no longer have easy access to jobs.
It doesn't take much reading of the news and around the local blogs to see that this has created problems.
MSNBC did a piece on abandoned KCMO homes due to forclosures (hat tip TKC) While it's true that many neighborhoods have been BADLY hit by the forclosure market, many were littered with abandoned homes well before the foreclosure mess. Interestingly, the area MSNBC highlighted was one that I mentioned not having many jobs available in it on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, crime continues to be a problem in the urban core -- and this year, violent crime in particular is way up,as Kansas City is on pace to have the most homicides its had in over a decade. Many of the people interviewed that are dealing -- nearly daily -- with the homicides cite the lack of educational and employment opportunities that are leading to a sense of hopelessness and thus, violence.
Meanwhile, abandoned buildings and abandoned homes continue to provide blight, and safe havens for people who are intent on doing harm.
The solutions to the problems are many -- because it's not a simple set of problems. But there are many steps that we need to take to improve the living conditions in the KCMO. There are two main areas that need to be addressed:
1) Improve the living conditions and opportunities for the people who are poor and live in these communities already.
2) Convince people who currently do not live in KCMO that it is a good place to live. And by "convince", sometimes I mean we'll need to create a Kansas City that is a good place to live.
We'll address each of these opportunities separately next week.
You're making sense - which means no one with any pull in this town will listen to you.
Is it something in the water that causes all our politicians' brains to shut down?
Posted by: City_Bluz | October 17, 2008 at 11:07 AM
It certainly takes a different type of politician to put aside interests in the upper class citizens of KCMO and put emphasis on the core. Let's face it, these aren't the people who are making major campaign contributions.
I'll also note, that this problem isn't soley on our city leaders to fix. We're going to need help from the business, private and religious community as well if we're truly going to make this happen.
Four more people were murdered in KCMO last night -- just hours after this post was written. We're well past the point where this problem can be ignored.
Posted by: Brent | October 17, 2008 at 12:08 PM
Broke is an apt description of the situation.
I lay much of this reality to the previous City Council- AND Mayor Barnes. They conspired to make a "Downtown Renaissance", by diverting the money and resources that would address this no-jobs/ no-money/ no-hope situation.
It was bad 8 years ago- worse 4 years ago- and awful bad now.
I am not half-way about this. There are "forces of evil" out there, ( self-interested developers- and those who help them ), and they have made this murderous situation by their greed and power plays.
We do have a good man, Mayor Funkhouser, who is working to undo the harm that our previous "leaders" have brought us.
Posted by: Bill Drummond | October 17, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Bill,
I'm not going to disagree with you on the "forces of evil" aspects of this. However, in several ways I think the previous council really paved the way for us to make this succeed. I certainly don't agree with everything that was done...but some of the things they did are going to be helpful if we're going to help solve the problem.
Posted by: Brent | October 17, 2008 at 01:48 PM
Brent,
Yes, it is true that there are positive forces- those are "forces of decency".
And with some intelligent pro-active planning- our city could be the place that we remember it to be.
When I was a kid, KC was the place where everything exciting and colorful. Let's make it that way again!
Posted by: Bill Drummond | October 21, 2008 at 11:09 PM