Obstacles Progress

This is Billy Bob and the Consortium
Let’s Have a Conversation Today

By Living We are Obstacle to Progress
Gentrification and Modernization Are Desired

Hello Folks, I am Bill, I am the old man of the group, and I can be quite sentimental at times. But this mess of removing all the older and more rundown buildings for these high-rise and expensive buildings is stupid on steroids. The old neighborhoods are dying, destroyed and no longer able to do their jobs. They call it progress, and they say we are standing in the way; does it make any sense? But let’s see what today’s card will stir up

Riposte

But this mess of tearing down older, worn-down buildings just to stack up high-rise, high-dollar towers? That’s stupidity on steroids.

Old neighborhoods are being erased. Not repaired. Not strengthened. Destroyed. Stripped of the very fabric that let them do their job—hold people, history, relationships, community. Then they slap the word progress on it and tell us we’re the problem, that we’re standing in the way.

Standing in the way of what, exactly?

Because what I see isn’t progress. It’s displacement dressed up as development. It’s amnesia with a price tag. It’s the slow death of places that once mattered, replaced by structures that don’t know the people beneath them.

A hard truth most people avoid

You can believe in:

• Accountability
• Discipline
• Improvement
• Order
• Progress

And still recognize that mass displacement creates instability that spreads—not disappears.

Homelessness doesn’t stay where it starts.
It moves.
It concentrates.
It hardens.

Cities that ignore that reality end up paying more later—in enforcement, emergency care, and decay.

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Bottom line (no sugarcoating)

• Development is necessary ✅
• Some people absolutely choose dysfunction ✅
• Personal responsibility matters ✅

But:

• Gentrification can create homelessness without anyone being “lazy”
• Self-improvement doesn’t outpace sudden economic displacement
• Treating displaced people as disposable doesn’t solve the problem—it relocates it

Initial Reaction from the Consortium

Before we fuss and get all wired weird, let’s remember what that giant word means, in our lingo. Gentrification, simply put, fancy up the apartments, condos in a given area and encourage businesses to come to the area. In that, new families, businesses, jobs, and the old, crappy stuff and people are flushed out, often to homelessness. Enough brainwork.

Why, why are we always seen as obstacles, the difficult ones, the problems, the ones blocking so called change, why?

 Them and their big words, accountability, discipline and order, what does that mean when we lose our housing for their great new building projects?

Sure, would like to know what they mean when they say some chose chaos and dysfunction, is it just us, or is it in their camp as well? But are we actually disposable?

I mean, they have gone as far as calling us shelter resistant and street hardened to justify their rough handling and they want us to talk to them today this mess, why?

Round Table Discussion/Frustration

Good Morning folks, it is me, Sally, the quiet one. I don’t like how stirred up everybody is right now. This is why I stepped off to the side and wanted to talk to you from a quieter place. This making everything new in a city, I think the fancy word is gentrification, is nothing more than chasing out the old established folks and bringing in the new, wealthy, upwardly mobile, think it will change everything. But what is not yapped about is the damage done to neighborhoods, communities and long-term extended community structures that cannot be replaced. The small businesses, churches, jobs are also impacted, it makes a mess, and they think it is progress. See, here is the answer you don’t want to hear: we are the easier to pick off targets, not the true problems.

It’s Mike, this city has been torn to shreds in the name of progress and it has no end in sight. The lie of making it better, prettier, and nicer is okay, but no one can afford to live here anymore. The homeless were just ignored and barely tolerated about 5 to 7 years ago, but now we are flat out obstacles to their plans, purposes, and ideas to fundamentally change how this city looks and feels. I mean, face facts, you cannot have a person or family paying stupid rent rates and then walk outside and see a bum sitting on the curb begging for help, I mean, really. The whole package must be managed, and we don’t fit and thus we have to be made to disappear, it is the way they want us to manage now!

Well see what you all don’t know is this, most of us old timers have hiding holes that will never be found, they are sneaky, subtle and difficult to find, and it is on purpose, because we don’t trust you house folks at all. We all know of those areas that will never be touched by modernization and for upgrades, so even as obstacles and the unwanted, we have our places, niches and can hide and watch you burn the town down with ravenous zeal for better until it ain’t. Yes, we may be obstacles to progress by your definition, but are we also no longer human beings? That is all me, Frankie has to say.

Okay, new buildings, new high rises, new condos and apartments, who can afford to live there and who is losing their housing within a few years due to unaffordability? I mean, that is where my thinking goes. The buildings are ugly and they have destroyed old, established neighborhoods and communities, and now the eye sores are in place, and some remain over half empty. Why? Cost to own or rent. But that is just my take as a military man, I don’t like imposed chaos that has no god out come for the people who are truly in need, more homeless are coming due to these bad decisions. I guess I have seen too much chaos used for the wrong reasons while I served in the military and it was never good in the end.

Riposte

Gentrification swings a heavy hammer—
demands without mercy,
progress without pause,
crushing the “obstacles” in its path,
who happen to be human,
living where they are no longer wanted,
standing where profit says they must not be.

Choosing dysfunction is not a license to dehumanize—people are not stumbling stones to progress, not useless debris to be cleared away, and not engines of chaos simply because their lives have gone off course.

When displaced people are treated as disposable, progress slows, instability deepens, and the cost is merely deferred—paid later in the far higher price of chronic homelessness.

Okay, Our Turn, We Ask You Some Questions:

Our Hope that you will see through the superficial topic of discussion, seeing us as immovable obstacles to your precious desire of progress, that trap us to the streets and to the graves

That you begin to understand the danger of: Not thinking for your own self, but where you can challenge groupthink

See the great divide presented today in this discussion, where have you allowed groupthink to creep in when it comes to modernization and gentrification, thus increasing homelessness

Finally, assess for yourself, is this a true, true mindset that I have allowed or is it something that I have been fed, and it is false, critically important

Conclusion

We, the coffee consortium, want to say thanks for trusting us with big words and a different line of conversation today. It was not as tough as some of our past talks; nobody got so mad today we had to stop for breathers.

We even learned from you housed folks how to say that big, giant word, gentrification! Which is a polite way of saying making it all new and pretty and upgraded, which means the down and out got to go and that means even if they must go to the streets, they go to go.

But one thing that you folks are still dancing around and would not answer from any of us is this: what happens to the old-time strength of the family neighborhoods that functions as safe guards against violence, gangs, hunger in the neighbors’ home, struggles that could lead to homelessness, grandma and grandpa seeing two and three generations, what about that? But you ducked and dodged…

What Will Their Outcome Be?

You Have a Part to Play…