08/18/2015
Here are the facts that won't be published in our local media.
"The abandonment of properties by landlords like Charles Finnell is not somehow the opposite of the gentrification underway in the North Limestone and Jefferson Street corridors; these processes are instead intimately interconnected and dependent upon one another. The lack of both public and private investment in these neighborhoods over long periods of time has set the stage for a class of landlords — absentee or otherwise — to gobble up bunches of real estate on the cheap, reshaping surrounding neighborhoods in such a way as to maximize their private gain at the expense of the community and common good. For these individuals and the associated financiers, developers and real estate agents, it makes little difference whether one refurbishes a historic building into an upscale bar or leaves a shotgun house to fall into disrepair while continuing to collect rent, so long as the profit margins are high enough. [...] So even if the actions and approaches of individual landlords or developers can range from the more-to-less benign, the concentration of property ownership in a smaller and smaller number of hands, many of which tend to be from outside the neighborhood, means that the future of the East End continues to be shaped largely by a select few individuals with little personal stake in the area. Whether the news of the day is the collapse of an abandoned building or the construction of an upscale mixed-use development meant to lure ‘the right kind of people’ into long-neglected areas of the city, it’s of the utmost importance that we treat these processes and places not as separate or isolated, but rather fundamentally interconnected and mutually-constituted."
At approximately 6:30pm on Saturday, August 8th, the building standing at 500–502 East Third Street on the corner of Rac…
