The bands played on
While the Sun Valley Symphony played, 31 families packed their belongings last week.
While the pickers picked and the bluesmen wailed at the Northern Rockies Folk Festival, the same families tried to tie up loose ends for the day their eviction notices will be final.
While lush spreads of wine and cheese were placed invitingly on checked cloths, the residents of the J&C Trailer Park were contemplating the loss of the roofs over their heads. A lucky few have found other places to live. A few plan to leave the area. A few are contemplating bankruptcy.
Perhaps they could have found solace in the free admission to the symphony.
While local events multiply each year, through donor largesse and major volunteer efforts, the supply of affordable community housing shrinks. With every uptick in property values, another working family is priced out of a home.
For all of August?s energy, little of it has managed to work its way toward solving the valley?s most serious problem: the shortage of affordable housing.
While mobile homes were pried from their moorings last week, the Blaine County Commissioners approved ?no net housing loss? provisions. The Blaine County Housing Authority languished in political purgatory, a toothless somnambulant tiger. City council members happily contemplated funding the BCHA, knowing that they?d handed off the hard duty on housing.
And the bands played on.
