Jerry Summers
The history of Choo Choo City and Hamilton County are filled with thousands of examples of the generous acts of charity and philanthropy toward the needy and less fortunate members of our community.
It has been reported that we have 2,497 (+1 at Erlanger Medical Center) 501(c)(3) non-profits under the Internal Revenue Code and 171 private foundations who all have long reported backgrounds of providing charity and opportunity to those individuals in need as well as communities, veterans groups, firemen, policemen, etc. Individuals respond quickly with their resources to provide help to the less fortunate. These charitable practices have existed since Hamilton County was created.
The above described resource appears to be more than adequate to provide a livable environment from both citizens who were born here or are long term residents.
Self-promoting individuals purport to solve the increasing homeless population by obtaining taxpayer funds (city, state, and federal) under the never ending grant requests that do not solve the homegrown homeless problems but continue to invite and bring more unfortunate citizens from all over America as well as criminals, the mentally ill, a group of individuals that can work but do not want to accept a job opportunity, etc.
The combination of the substantial local problems plus the attractive natural setting of our area and the abundant charitable goals of a well-meaning populace both adds and detracts to the benefits and burdens of the politically motivated drum beaters while helping a select minority at the expense of the majority. Spending 100M of the taxpayers money is a noble goal.
A recent news release by the local municipality media machine proudly announced the homeless without housing “had been reduced 40 percent” during the tenure of the current administration. This is commendable and should be acknowledged (if accurate).
However, the charitable efforts of our community are self defeating if we place 1,000 homeless individuals in housing and they are replaced with another 1,000 (or more) migrants from cities like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. because of the benevolent hearted.
An unidentified acquaintance who has a record of working on behalf of the less fortunate for many years remarked that he had been told that “the majority of the needy individuals came from areas no more than 50 miles from Hamilton County.” When pressed as to what was the source of those statistics their answer was that it came from a local municipal employee.
In light of the accompanying issues of crime, inflation, sewer debt, etc it would be expected that a current updated and accurate count of the old and new arrivals from independent and impartial sources be mandatory.
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You can reach Jerry Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com