I'm not sure if I'm dreaming and someone needs to pinch me, or maybe I'm in the Bizarro Universe where everything is the opposite of what it seems. But I recently attended a community forum put together by 5th Ward Council Member Blong Yang around city housing and regulatory services policies, and I left with nothing critical to say.
The Problem Properties Unit and the Department of Regulatory Services seem to be shifting in culture, and doing so in ways that northside (and other citywide) housing activists have been pushing for over the last few years, if not longer. Many of the changes being rolled out are ones that we in the community have been saying for quite some time would be common-sense reforms, and yet we were quite frankly treated as pariahs or out-of-touch crazies who just didn't understand the process. (As if an almost religious adherence to bureaucracy was some sort of noble pursuit that community members had wantonly abandoned.)
What kind of reforms are we talking about? Well...
