The Cincinnati Beacon
Westwood’s Hatred of the Handicapped?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 Photo courtesy of here.
Melva Gweyn and her merry band of bandits have done it again! They are so worried about their fabricated fear of Westwood being taken over by Section 8, that they can’t even think like normal human beings if the words “rental” and “assistance” are uttered in the same sentence. Apparently, the phrase makes their Section 8 radars go haywire. So much so, that this week the Westwood Civic Association allegedly voted to oppose funding for handicapped people in a program that didn’t even target Westwood in the first place.
This past Monday, the Finance Committee passed this item. It doesn’t say anything about “handicapped people.” Instead, it just reads this in the minutes:
ORDINANCE (EMERGENCY) submitted by Milton Dohoney, Jr., City Manager, on 6/11/2008, establishing a new HOME Investment Trust project account, 411x162x89600 “Tenant Based Rental Assistance 2008” and further AUTHORIZING the transfer and appropriation of the sum of $1,500,000 from various HOME Investment Trust project accounts to the newly established HOME Investment Trust project account, 411x162x89600, “Tenant Based Rental Assistance 2008” according to the attached schedule of transfer to provide funding for a tenant based rental assistance program for eligible households through a contract with Hamilton County Department of Community Development.
You can just imagine how Melva and her renegades must have felt! $1.5 million in rental assistance! You can just see their imaginations filling with the fear of white t-shirts and baggy pants!
And if you go and look at the ordinance language, you can see how the idea was to quickly implement this program so “eligible households” could start receiving assistance.
Can’t you just see them? Freaking out about how people need to take responsibility for themselves, not relying on Section 8 so “their kids” can run rampant in the streets of Westwood?
So on Wednesday, before the Council meeting, Melva and her bitter bandits stormed City Hall. They demanded that this item be taken off the agenda for the evening. According to my sources, led by the Westwood pandering Leslie Ghiz, Melva’s political puppets knocked the thing back into committee.
It just seems like Melva, and her bandits, and even the politicians who will carry out Westwood’s weird wishes in a run for more votes—it seems like all of them failed to read this internal correspondence sheet carefully:
Hamilton County will work in conjunction with the Center for Independent Living Options to implement a tenant based rental assistance program for eligible households.
The Center for Independent Living? Yes, that’s right—the group that helps handicapped people.
Handicapped people!
From their mission:
Who We Are
No one asks to be disabled by injury, disease or act of nature. Today, hundreds of people, and their families and friends in Greater Cincinnati will learn that their lives are about to change forever. If you or someone you know has a disability, please give us a call to learn how we can help.
The Center for Independent Living Options (CILO) is dedicated to helping individuals who have physical, sensory, cognitive, and/or psychological disabilities to maintain active, productive lives of their choosing. In fact, we are who we serve. We are governed, managed, and staffed by a majority of professionals with disabilities. This gives us personal insight into the issues that people with disabilities face.
Our Mission
To break down architectural and attitudinal barriers, build bridges to understanding, and create options and choices in the continuous process of empowerment of persons with disabilities.
Melva Gweyn and Westwood are now apparently afraid that their neighborhood will become awash with handicapped people.
A lot of individuals think that large scale opposition to Section 8 is just thinly veiled racism. So they view Melva and her bandits as being racists. Such accusations, however, can become complicated, since “Section 8” does not necessarily connect purely with being “black.” Some will talk about class issues, which are a legitimate point. Others will talk about the culture of poverty. Yet others will bring in the issue of disrespectful youth culture, or crime. They’ll talk about property values, and on and on.
But what is the argument against handicapped people? What Cincinnati neighborhood has “too many” handicapped people? Who has lost property value because too many wheelchairs showed up on the street? Who feels unsafe because there are kids with walkers hanging out near the bus stop?
These ideas are the stuff of fevered hallucinations. What’s more ridiculous is that it looks like Westwood simply didn’t read the information carefully—and now they are on full force opposition of giving “rental assistance” to handicapped people.
This Monday’s Committee meeting will be interesting, to say the least. The Westwood bandits probably have too much ego to admit their mistake, so I’m sure they’ll be there, with raving rants about handicapped people and Westwood.
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