Plum Market early, then a little recon mission down by the farmers market to scout out a new parking situation for when “they” close my fave lot sometime this spring so “they” can build some sort of big “affordable” housing thingy.

Then, when Cost Plus World Warehouse opened at 10 I took a little drive out there. I have some wire mesh drawer organizers that I *thought* I bought there many years ago. Last weekend I was cleaning out one of my junk drawers, the one that holds fancy little utensils for serving stuff like smoked salmon and goat cheese, etc. It was a horrible mess but there was *one* little mesh thingy in there and I decided getting a couple more would help. I got on the internet… And didn’t really find what I was looking for. Alas, Cost Plus didn’t have such a thing. Thinking about it some more, I wondered if I’d actually gotten them at Bed Bath and Beyond, which I don’t think has a bricks and mortar store here any more (although they are online). I doubled down on my search terms and found what I was looking for on good old Amazon.

Affordable housing. Of course I am for affordable housing. Who isn’t? I am not sure my city is approaching it thoughtfully. It seems like most of the new (tall) buildings downtown are real estate developer driven. Since when do developers care about anything besides enriching their own pockets? Oh yeah, we’ll put some affordable units in our upscale apartment building. Um, where are you going to put them, in the dungeon? Also why does big tall apartment buildings downtown seem to be the only option? I’m not sure all the folks seeking housing WANT to live in big apartment buildings.

There are a lot of people yammering away about affordable housing but to me it feels like the city is relentlessly trying to fill up downtown with big buildings. Once it was office space, now it is residential. The writing was on the wall long ago when they razed the Sunshine Bakery and built a big glass and steel behemoth in its space. The Sunshine Bakery was a small approachable store. Is there a store or bar or restaurant on the ground floor of the big glass/steel behemoth? I couldn’t tell you but it is not a welcoming space. The old wannabe hippie in me is missing the old Sunshine Bakery (even though I don’t think I ever patronized it).

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT know all of the issues surrounding the affordable housing problem and it IS a problem. I certainly don’t know all the answers. I just don’t think we should let real estate developers drive the solutions. But lots of unfinished thoughts here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2024 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.