For those of you who read the Sunday Gazette Editorial Page on Jan. 25, you would have found out (or maybe you already knew) about Vale Village and the expense the city and others went to, to rehab 20 (yep 20) houses. $8.5 million. Let me repeat myself: $8.5 million. Now I’m not great at numbers, in fact I suck, but I figure it cost somewhere around $400,000 to rehab each and every house. Land, of course, was free. Imagine what you could build for $400,000. Especially if the lot is free. Now I ask you this: who is living in these houses at this moment? Some are rented, they are standard two-story homes with a small yard. Some still look pretty good, others are empty or even boarded up. There was a brand new home completed this year (not one of the original 20). You may remember there were some questions asked about the cost, but the city persevered, saying it was totally handicapped-accessible and completely eco-friendly.

Its bottom apartment is boarded up. I don’t know if the top half is rented. I do know there was a house being rehabbed on the corner of Grove and Victory — bright yellow siding; it looked pretty good actually. The house on Grove right next door burned this fall and is completely destroyed. It still has the yellow tape around it. And the house with the yellow siding, never finished, has graffiti written large on its outside walls. Garish black letters against an unfinished yellow siding.

I drive these streets daily — I see the Victory Street Boys on the block, young kids dealing and fighting and running the neighborhood like small-time gangsters. And kids... many of my kids come from Vale!
A few weeks ago I wrote about picking up children from Victory Avenue and being pinned by the cops who were raiding the house where I was picking up kids. Of course, the kids are still there. Last week I went inside and there’s no furniture, kids all sleeping on mattresses on the floor. No sheets, just a blanket. This ain’t no $400,000 home. What are we doing?

I’d like to see what happened to all that money?

Surely as a sensible adult who owns a home with a double lot in Niskayuna, which has been assessed at $225,000, you might say I’ve quit believing in the value of these $400,000 homes. What are they assessed at? It seems to me that figures in the ghettos are not quite the same as they are in the rest of the world.

To further my mathematical confusion, the Department of Juvenile Justice released its Juvenile Incarceration figures. Between $150,000 to $200,000 to incarcerate (except it’s not called by that name, something else warmer and fuzzier that makes us think of pleasant little farms and cottages) for “one year.” One year folks, $150,000 to $200,000 per youth. I’d sure like to see an accounting for those figures. Especially since Juvenile Justice speaks of an 85% recidivism rate in young males.
Juvenile Justice did a study and found that it costs only $12,000 per annum, per child, for a high quality after-school program, and (this is a big AND) recidivism is 20% or less.

Think of this: what could a family of four or five do with $150,000 a year? Certainly they would get off of welfare and food stamps. I am not joking, just stating the obvious. While we are nickel and diming in social services, there are millions of dollars floating around and doing magic disappearing acts. Why, we’re even closing summer pools as part of budget cuts. I have children coming to Quest with no underwear or underwear large enough for a 200-pound woman. I’ll not soon forget Jason’s cry of pure pleasure over finally having socks for his feet. This is a six-year-old boy and this in January and sneakers with no socks or shoelaces is not a fashion statement. He lives in Vale Village. He goes to school — am I the only one who notices these things? I know the other kids in the car do. Where is his teacher on this?

Where is the city on this? D.S.S. has moved, it is not convenient to its clients, if it ever was. Maybe I should say, it is less convenient.

Where are the child welfare workers? Who’s minding the store? We are always taking these children into our homes for weekends, to clean them up, to fatten them up! To comb their hair. You would be surprised how many of these children have never seen a comb or brush. Teepha said one day, “Now I know what the word nappy means,” as she struggled to wash and comb a young girl’s hair. We have Hair Days at Quest. All you really need are combs and cheap beads (What would we do without the Dollar Store?) and a million rubberbands. This week we are getting 150 tubes of toothpaste and 65 containers of women’s deodorant, not to mention soap and shampoo.

We make up little bags and hand them to kids and teens and adults as they leave. We give toothbrushing demonstrations, and hand-washing exhibitions. We talk about body odor and changing your socks and underwear everyday.

We look at diaper rash and talk to young moms, and some not so young, about keeping your baby clean. “Babies are supposed to smell GOOD!” says JoJo. Sometimes Teepha will run home with a baby or young child and bathe and oil her and bring back a sparkling clean child.

We give away blankets. One year, one of our blankets was a child’s only winter coat. This is hard, heartbreaking labor. We run Quest on $140,000 a year and lots of good will and volunteers. I look at all this money floating by, I gawk at $8.5 million. This amount is almost beyond my comprehension. We have no clients living in pretty little cottages, driving shiny cars, and joining health and/or beauty clubs.
We just have struggling families, families that represent a large part of Schenectady’s population. They are not smoking cigars downtown or eating in that interesting chic cafe. Trickle down economics has proven to be one of the biggest jokes of 2008. People go downtown to eat dinner, see a show and go home; they do not visit the ghettos. They Do Not Pass Go on Albany Street. They do not donate $200. They do not even see the streets, or the faces, or the children. They just drive home, I’m sure, by a different route, so they will not feel uncomfortable. But remember all the people who benefit from all this development money flowing into our ghettos. The contractors benefit, the administrators benefit (not the workers; most come out of Labor Ready).

There is no or very little union employment here. And even if they use union workers, very few union people live in our ghetto. All the stores and companies that sell to the builders make money. The list just goes on, of course. But what about the children? What about the cost of the apartments to rent once they are finished? Where is the supermarket that could really help the community? What about D.S.S. being housed right here in Hamilton Hill ... right in the old health building on Craig Street? Now there’s an idea that could really benefit everyone. Maybe it’s just too simple an answer. Maybe nobody even cares. Maybe nobody ever will.