Saturday, May 14, 2016

Our Broken Home Cedar Rapids by: Colin R. Mulholland

After the 2008 flood we were given allocated grant money from the united states government at a total of $798 million dollars, but due to the government's rather bullshit law about lending money the city of Cedar Rapids only acquired a grand total of $24 Million. This money was supposed to be spent on rebuilding the homes and existing businesses damaged by the flood. Where has all that money gone to? In the eight years since the flood all I have ever seen was the demolition o...f homes, demolition of business, and the gain of funding for things like the Newbo Market, the Newbo Depot, fancy expensive condominiums in the surrounding newbo neighborhoods, the over reproduction of the Cedar Rapids library (which is great it was rebuilt but all that fancy shit inside it is unnecessary), and that huge ass skyscraper being built downtown. The city government has just spent $189,00.00 dollars to bring in a California based company called ArborPro to survey our trees.... When a local company like Culvers could have done that for cheaper. The smaller businesses had to rebuild from scratch outta pocket, the ones who did are either struggling or have since gone out of business. There are STILL abandoned homes on the SW side caused by the flood. Cedar Rapids have become obsessed with greedy capitalism. They don't try to stop the violence problem completely, they just throw a blanket over it. A total of at least four or five African American teenagers have died over gun violence in the past four years alone. And all that money spent on building BIGGER businesses could have fixed our ghettos. This is Cedar Rapids. Our broken home.