I was speaking with another old woman yesterday evening who lives in a small modest house in my Green Acres Neighborhood that she inherited. Is about to put a new roof on it, and wondered if she could park her car overnight in front of my house. Of course I said yes.

BTW: she got the new roof by getting an estimate from the company that’s doing lots of new roofs in this neighborhood, and found out they would  charge her nearly $20K, though they contract with Mexican laborers who work for much much less. But: she was lucky, she said; somehow she got hold of one of the laborers, and contracted directly with him, taking about $12K off the price. (She promised to send me his contact info.)

Meanwhile, I asked about her situation now, with the ghastly, monstrous”duplex” development just behind her on North Jefferson Street.

And that took us on a conversational journey, while standing on my front porch.

 

This woman is  among the many authentic, caring humans who are being not only being pushed aside, but invaded;  indeed, our lovely, treed, flowery, grassy, old time, small home neighborhood is in the first stages of being detonated eradicated, by what I can only call the prevailing, more and more ravenous, Greed Virus.

The street behind (west) of her, North Jefferson, which used to feature wonderful small homes built by returning GIs and their families after World War II, fronts a massive parking lot that forms the eastern edge of Indiana University. One block of that street now features eight two-story “duplexes,” five bedrooms and five bathrooms per unit. Very expensive, each bedroom. 10 bedrooms per building, 80 bedrooms (likely for IU students) on a single block! And cars! But of course! No problem! They can park in the IU parking lot!

I can’t find my photo of the street before all the small homes were demolished.

Nor can I find my photo of the all eight monstrous duplexes that now hunker on that single block.

But you get the gist.

 

Okay. Yesterday, this old woman who lives on the street in back of these duplexes tells me she has been affected already by standing water after rains, and the situation promises to get worse, once they fix the flooding on the alley side of her fence.

BTW: she speaks of her situation without even a trace of victim attitude. Rather, realism. She’s totally realistic about what is going on, and says it’s utterly inevitable. That “there’s nothing we can do.”

For now, she said, as of only two weeks ago, the same developer has bought the two houses side by side next to her —  one of which has a brand new roof! — and says they are both to be demolished, replaced by two more of these identical monstrosities.

As she said, “they don’t care” about the people who currently live where they are “developing” (i.e., investing in financial “returns”), and to hell with everybody else.

I’m going to end up, she told me, like the woman depicted in the movie “UP.”

When she mentioned that the two houses next to hers sold for over $400,000 each, I confess I got excited: “Wow. Maybe sell your house!”

In other words, I too, was suddenly infected by the Greed Virus.

Of course, she said “NO.” And not with the emphasis I give the word here. Simply, “no.”

 

It took me a few minutes before I recognized my own brief complicity.

WOW!

And to think that I was the one who composed the passionate introduction to our Green Acres Neighborhood Plan, in 2007.

Intro to Foreward to 2007 Plan copy.1

Green Acres Neighborhood Plan (2006)

That was back in 2006. Twenty years later, I’m 20 years older, and wondering just how much longer either Green Acres Neighborhood or myself will still be here, on planet Earth!

Or are we, as a species, (assuming we don’t blow ourselves up first), about to climb out of Earth’s play pen and  “lift off” into the wild blue yonder?