Just came across this in my travels:

http://www.projecthome.org/Highlights/kates.html

Is this true?

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Yes it is. The building is undergoing renovation right now.

Hmm.. how are the residents taking it? I can hear the NIMBY screams from here.... or maybe that's the scuzzies hanging out downstairs -- LOL!

Oh, ho, ho, I'm sooooo funny....

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I haven't heard anything. I'm really surprised since the Center City Residents' Association (read: Rittenhouse Square NIMBY Association) has done everything to stop the building of new luxury highrises and the opening of restaurants in that area but has sat silently in regards to what will likely be housing that's open for Section 8 vouchers.

Am I the only one who's bothered by the frequent mention of "scuzzies," regular anti-panhandling diatribes, complaints about "quality of life crimes" and general class snobbery that seem to pervade this board?

Guess what, poor people are part of this city and have rights too. I'm glad to see section eight housing in an area that's not completely devastated - the effects of poverty are just exacerbated when it's geographically concentrated. If affordable housing is interspersed with market rate housing, poverty becomes everyone's problem - not a problem that can be brushed "out of sight, out of mind" off in north philly.

If you're so fond of class segregation move to Bryn Mawr.

Koku, they are building market rate / affordable housing all over the city, not in North Philly.

Look at the housing project in East Falls

There's another housing project in South Philly right off 95

There's another one being built outside of Northern Liberties, those houses are beautiful and I can't even get one if I wanted.

Thanks for sharing your view and speaking up.[/url]

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Koku -

You misunderstand. This is not about class at all, at least as far as I'm concerned. When I posted the info about Rittenhouse, it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Personally, I find it amusing since the Rittenhouse area is exactly five blocks from me... so whatever is in my neighborhood is not far from their neighborhood anyway. I was poking a little fun at them.

I grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and my mother raised five children alone. I've been poor a hell of a lot longer than I've been "middle class", as far as income is concerned.

But here's the deal: when there are young men breaking into vacant apartments, trying to sneak into the building behind the tenants, and hanging around my building at all hours of the night for no other reason than for the purpose of selling drugs or sex, (all of this happened in my building) that equals scuzzie in my book. I've grown up around enough of them in NYC to know a scuzzball when I see one.

There is a difference between "scuzzball" and low income or homeless person.

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Mahatma Gandhi

yes you are. poor does not equal scuzzie. sure there are rich scuzzies too but they aren't easy to spot, they don't hang on people's doorsteps or try to squat in apartments. nor do whey walk around piss drunk urinating and defecating where they please. rich ones do thigs in private. am i to assume that poor people are all bums, scuzzies, etc? i don't think so. there are plenty of poor people who don't engage in such behavior that are poor. and the verdict is out on whether ?making it eeryone's problem" is the way to go. In the past, making something everyone's problem has made everyone elave for bryn mawr/exton/cherry hill/etc. that's great. then you have Detroit.

I don't think any of us are into class segregation. If we were, we wouldn't live in the city. "Scuzzies", when used here, refers to questionable people, be they poor, middle class, or rich. Walk down 13th Street at night and you'll see some people all drunk or all drugged up and then illegally entering into private buildings. We don't know whether they're poor or middle class or rich, but we do know that this behavior is a problem. Granted, they may need assistance but part of that is that they must also be willing to seek help and its been reported in the media that many of them are on the street because they actively refused help. In addition, there are prostitutes along 13th Street and drug dealers (I've encountered them myself). Now it may be that economic conditions drove them to those professions, but there are better ways to make a living than to partake in something that actively flaunts the law.
Regarding panhandlers, it is not regular panhandlers that get people on this forum up in arms. Rather, it is the aggressive panhandlers who insult people when they don't give them money and sometimes physically attack. I know we can't simply sweep the aggressive panhandlers under the rug but we don't have to like dealing with their insults either (once again, non-aggressive panhandlers are one thing, aggressive panhandlers are a different thing).
As for Section 8 housing in Rittenhouse, I'm not against it. I was just mentioning how I found it curious as to how the NIMBYs there, who are so actively against every development, have not raised a fuss over Kate's Place (affordable housing for low income people near Rittenhouse). It does seem kind of odd. I was going to further elaborate and remark that Kate's Place is meant to be a place for *working* low income people, as opposed to the Parker Hotel which, from I've heard, has become a place where some drug dealers and prostitutes hang out. However, I didn't want to go that deep because I sensed that this might be a sensitive topic.

I agree. It is too easy to start the guilt trip by saying that people criticizing the "scuzzies" are not being compassionate. "Scuzzy" refers not to poor people but to people who do not act the way people in a proper society should act. This is not an issue of snobbery but one of whether we live in a society or in a world where every man/woman can act every which way without regard to the consequences of his/her actions.
We're all human and we've all been through trying times, whether it be unemployment, family problems, whatever, and yet we don't deal with these situations by becoming drug addicts, wash out our minds with alcohol, or feign dominance over others by randomly insulting them, aggressively hitting them up for money, or lashing out physically. Remember Russel Byers, a former Philadelphia Daily News reporter (and alumnus of my high school)? He was stabbed to death by one of the scuzzies in front of the Wawa in Chestnut Hill when he didn't give him money! Regarding the guy responsible, are we to say that it was society's fault that turned him into a monster not able to control his anger or should we expect that certain people simply lack any apprecaition for society's norms of behavior? The economic level of these scuzzies has nothing to do with it. For all we know, these people could be middle class or rich. In fact, the guy who killed Byers was a middle class city employee living in a $900 a month apartment in Chestnut Hill who was hitting people up for money to support his drug habit.
Society has set rules for how people should act. We are taught those norms by our parents or, if not by our parents, by our teachers and if not there then by other members of society. Certain of these norms have been codified into law. People can not go around dealing or taking illegal drugs. People can not go around publicly drunk. People can not go around disturbing the peace by randomly insulting or attacking people. People can not break into a private residence. If these are excusable forms of behavior, they would not have been legislated against. Why are these not acceptable? Because such behavior often affects others (e.g., a drunk may loose control voer his/her actions and attack people). Also, these values are so pervasive that only people who are mentally incapable of comprehending them can be excused for not following. To the extent certain people are described here as "scuzzies", it is because they have, in some form or another, willfully flaunted these norms.
It is not as if we are acting like vigilantes and taking matters into our own hands when we come across a "scuzzy". However, you can't expect people who are living in a neighborhood where, when they take a walk down their block, they have to keep an eye peeled for a drunk or druggie bounding out and verbally or physically attacking them to simply look the other way when he/she sees scuzzy behavior. I think everyone who has been on the receiving end of some scuzzy person acting anti-socially would be leery of scuzzy people and not simply sit idly by and not even comment about the situation.
Also, to set the record straight, the term "scuzzy" was never used in this forum to refer to the low-income residents for whom the Kate's Place apartment building in the Rittenhouse area is intended for.