Dora Taylor, a parent activist in Seattle, noticed an interesting new development.
A developer plans to build a project that includes retail, low income housing and at one time, a charter school, the Green Dot charter school chain, in Southeast Seattle.
Based on further research, I found this is not an anomaly but a national trend.
Bankers, developers and real estate brokers are working together with Teach for America (TFA) and charter school enterprises to offer low income housing mainly for Teach for America recruits and other teachers who do not have adequate pay for clean and safe housing along with free space for charter schools through city and state support. These are our tax dollars paying for highly lucrative business ventures where all the profit goes back to the bankers, developers and brokers.
These people are not developing these projects out of the goodness of their hearts, they are doing it for, of course, the money.
Sorry, I know I said my comment on the previous thread would be my last, but I just caught this before we hit the road. In reading about things like this, we should be thinking of Foxconn, the Chinese factory where low-paid workers are housed on site in sub-standard, basically dormitory-like housing for ready availability at all hours of the day and night. Yet another way that education is being “run like a business”.
Exactly.
The NEW Slaves the “entitled” want are teachers. Good gawd. This has been THE GOAL for many years. Don’t let this happen.
And, China is NOT a good model to follow.
I call it the “new patronage”. Here in Chicago, where Rahm and the neo-liberal arm of the Democratic party have thrown working people under the bus, charters + developers is the new patronage machine. And it has worked really well for them here. But hopefully this is coming to an end.
I’ve read about this before. So, the TFAers get the taxpayer to pay for their college tuition (but not for everyone’s college tuition, just the profitable ones), then they apply to be low wage scabs paid by the taxpayer (dragging down everyone’s wages), then they pay those wages to the charter-real estate developers in the form of rent. So, the charter recoups the wages paid. And if the banks do business with the retail stores they set up, they profit off them too. Like I said, I have read about this before. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, the company town. The company owns everything in town and charges whatever it decides to charge. For everything. Bill Gates is either evil or stupid, investing in this.
Bingo.
This is a perfect example of government and a private “partnership” designed to benefit both groups. The city gets to gain higher priced real estate with much higher tax ratables, and the developer gets to create gentrified housing along with a selective charter school that will ensure a mostly white enrollment. The TFAers get to rent an affordable apartment while they work in the charter school. As the costs of housing in the area rise, the TFA staff member will be enticed to stay in the low wage job because they cannot afford to move. This reminded me of the non-compete clauses that are built into some low wage fast food workers’ jobs. If workers leave the job, they are not allowed to work in fast food for at least six months. The non-compete clause is designed to give companies the power to suppress wages and keep the workers in their place. The “teachers village” concept is somewhat similar to the “company store” in mining towns or migrant worker compounds. The government is essentially working with developers to exploit mostly female college graduates.
Newark also has a teachers village which the teachers union supported at first. When it was announced the village would house TFA workers, the union withdrew its support.http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/06/who-will-live-in-newarks-teachers.html
It has long been clear that the Broad Model has more to do with manipulating real estate values than it has with equal quality public education.
The same happened in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, except the TFA housing came at the expense of housing for flood displaced Black people. So ironically, some of the Brad Pitt housing ended up occupied by TFA kids who had taken jobs away from veteran black teachers.
So happy to see you here, Lance, continuing your legacy from the LA Coalition!
The last thing that’s needed is GENTRIFICATION. Good grief. Makes me ill.
BARF! 🤮
Mark Weber (aka, Jersey Jazzman) wrote about Newark Teacher’s Village in 2012. It’s an entire ecosystem of publicly subsidized real estate development & privatized profits. An entire industry is growing around charter schools for Wall St investment banks & real estate developers. Of course, the new residents will all need to buy insurance…
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-is-teachers-village.html
“Remember the name: Teachers Village. It’s a $150 million, mixed-use development that just broke ground with great fanfare in Newark. The idea is that teachers will live in the complex and teach at one of the three charter schools that will occupy the site.
As you might imagine, your taxpayers dollars are funding this experiment:
$100 million in tax credits; not too shabby. If anyone tries to convince you that billionaires are interested in charter schools solely out of altruism, point them to this project. Why else do you think the biggest Master of the Universe of them all showed up?
A few years back, we had an election for county executive here in the suburbs of Rockland where the big controversy was “workforce housing”, a proposal to use things like tax and zoning incentives to entice developers to reserve a small percentage of housing units for middle to low income workers like nurses, bus drivers or schools staff.
But as soon as the Democrat embraced the idea, the other side began a campaign of coded racist attacks on the proposal, falsely insinuating it would mean taxpayer-funded housing for minorities. The Republican won.
The solution seems pretty simple to me – just add an appropriate housing stipend into the salary of the worker. This cost of living adjustment is sometimes known as a “livable wage”.
Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
The commenters insights explain the awfulness of this idea, which exemplifies the way oligarchs suppress wages and control the ability of workers to seek work elsewhere…. all the while increasing their wealth.