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You’ve gotta love the NIMBY folks. NIMBY of course stands for Not In My BackYard. I’ve run into people like this no matter where I am. They really, truly and very loudly want the community to know how much they care about a subject. Honestly, they just want a project to succeed … as long as the discussed project isn’t anywhere near them. Of course I’m talking about the proposed STEPS homeless project, the apartment complex being discussed in Farmville.

I say proposed, not planned, because the people in charge don’t have any of the things to even get started. STEPS doesn’t even own the land to build it on yet. Now, in order not to drive the price up, I might have waited until I bought the land to start talking about what I planned to do on it, but to each his own. However, I think most of us can agree this is just an idea at this point, rather than something locked in stone. 

But as much as I would love to talk about the NIMBY folks in this case, I’m instead here to suggest a solution, one that might make everyone happy. I read Mr. Carlton’s story last month about Longwood Village failing yet again to find a buyer. Why doesn’t STEPS aim to buy that property instead? Attempted purchases just keep falling through, year after year, so I can imagine the price might be slightly lower as Longwood has to be tired of holding on to it at this point.

There’s also not going to be any uproar over demolishing it, as STEPS has made it clear they need a new building and all studies of the Village property seem to make it clear it’ll cost far too much to actually renovate the place itself. Also, if everyone recalls, the last attempted purchase was for something similar, in the vein of ‘affordable housing’ and nobody pitched a fit over that, so we shouldn’t have anyone afraid of lower property values in this case. 

So there you go. Buy the Village and tear it down. Let’s actually see some solutions to situations rather than just watch each side just go back and forth. That does nothing to help the community. 

Paul Xavier
Prince Edward County