Editor:
A full-page ad naming 300 retired public officials, academics, former representatives, businesses and financial institutions supporting “Humboldt Commons,” (McKinleyville’s estimated $110 million exclusive retirement community), is titled: “It Takes a Community to Build a Community.” (March 5).
Aren’t these individuals and organizations already in a community?
Would demand for another high-cost retirement community be as great if similarly determined officials (over the last two decades), raised their combined voices before 80 percent of Humboldt County’s overcrowded, understaffed and corrupt nursing homes became dominated by Schlomo Rechnitz’s Brius Corporation; or used their influence and public bullhorn to, instead, advocate for adequate in-home care services for the greater majority of elderly and disabled residents at far-less cost than another separate community few can afford?
We’re seeing what’s possible in Eureka as collaboration between public officials, tribes and supporters reverse a local legacy of resistance and neglect by building accessible housing and youth services.
Humboldt Commons promotes its “nonprofit” status as if the pursuit of revenue by competing for privileged pensioners with high-cost services and amenities differs significantly from pursuing profits using the same strategy; both invite petty fraud, nepotism and corruption due to their immunity from public scrutiny under FOIA and PRA requests.
Will residents of the proposed “affordable” compound be invited to serve on Humboldt Commons’ board of directors, or is their purchase of high-cost community services all that’s welcome?
The sudden collapse of the multimillion dollar “nonprofit” Humboldt State University Center Corp. serves as a stark warning, i.e., similarly seeking to increase enrollment with high-cost services charging user fees many students cannot afford yet must subsidize anyway through higher university tuition.
Socio-economic systems designed to advantage privileged individuals on the backs of “economic inferiors” are by nature unsustainable, described by philosopher Franz Fannon as, “Colonialism within a traditionally colonialist society.”
George Clark, Eureka
This article appears in Granny Rage on Women’s Day.