Trump's sinking ship.
Mar 27, 2017 20:17:48 #
Mar 27, 2017 20:22:25 #
CAPITOL JOURNAL
Nunes, Schiff symbolize California’s red-blue divide
REP. DEVIN NUNES, 43, is a Republican former dairy farmer from the southern San Joaquin Valley. (J. Scott Applewhite Associated Press) REP. ADAM SCHIFF, 56, is a Democratic former federal prosecutor representing parts of Los Angeles. (Nicholas Kamm AFP/Getty Images)
GEORGE SKELTON in sacramento
Two congressmen from the state President Trump seems to despise the most are leading an investigation into whether his campaign team conspired with the Russians. And the two lawmakers couldn’t be more different.
They symbolize, in many ways, the diversity of California and are a microcosm of the sprawling state.
Rep. Devin Nunes, 43, of Tulare is a Republican former dairy farmer from the conservative southern San Joaquin Valley. His county has nearly half a million cows.
Rep. Adam Schiff, 56, of Burbank is a Democratic former federal prosecutor from liberal neighborhoods stretching from Glendale through Hollywood, Los Feliz, Echo Park, western Pasadena and La Crescenta. His district has the Hollywood sign.
Democrats rule politics in California, but are relegated to second fiddle in Washington. So Nunes is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating — at least it’s supposed to be — whether there was any collusion between Trump campaign aides and sinister Russians to hobble Democratic loser Hillary Clinton.
Schiff is the committee’s ranking Democrat. But the only real power he has comes from his ability to articulate and attract a national audience, his savvy as a strategist to prod GOP weaknesses and the discipline to calmly rattle Nunes. He has been doing all this quite well.
California Democrats have been giving Trump a headache, or at least trying to. He lost the state in November by nearly 2 to 1.
Legislative leaders are attempting to declare California a “sanctuary state” to thwart the president’s attempts to deport immigrants here illegally. And while Trump has begun rolling back federal rules intended to fight global warming, California is pressing forward with tough new pollution-reduction requirements for automobiles.
California arguably has the nation’s most aggressive and expansive version of Obamacare, which Democrats and political activists have vigorously fought to preserve while Trump has tried and failed to repeal.
“California in many ways is out of control,” Trump told Fox News last month.
In Nunes, however, Trump seemingly has a soul mate and certainly a loyal follower. The congressman served on his transition team.
The Russian investigation aside, Nunes’ obsessive interest is on attaining more irrigation water for the valley, primarily from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. That has been his legislative focus for years. And he often has tangled with centrist Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her attempts to balance irrigation and the environment.
You name it, his congressional district produces it: wine grapes, raisins, figs, peaches and — increasingly — thirsty almonds and pistachios. Tulare County also leads the nation in dairy sales. The Nunes family, of Portuguese descent, has operated a large dairy farm for three generations.
Nunes rails at “radical environmentalists” who are trying to save threatened salmon and the coastal fishing industry. It was a “man-made drought,” not lack of rain, that created water shortages for farmers the last five years, he has said.
“There was plenty of water,” he contends, but President Obama gave it to fish.
And, while complaining that government isn’t building enough dams, Nunes simultaneously attacks big government, equating Democratic spending to “a broke gambler who desperately keeps doubling down in a vain effort to break even.”
Nunes, like Trump, also is a climate change denier. “Global warming is nonsense,” he has proclaimed.
But these days, Nunes is making headlines as the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who, Schiff contends, is too friendly to the president. It compromises Nunes’ ability, the Democrat says, to conduct an objective investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian operatives.
Schiff is far from the only one. A New York Times editorial criticizing Nunes last week was headlined: “A Lapdog in a Watchdog Role.”
This was after Nunes rushed to the White House with newly learned intelligence that was perhaps relevant to the committee’s investigation, but he didn’t share it with the committee. Nunes later apologized. But some lawmakers from both parties are calling for an independent investigation, a notion Nunes flatly rejects.
“It’s no way to run an investigation,” Schiff told the Los Angeles Times. “You don’t go to someone who is associated with people that are under investigation with evidence and withhold it from the investigatory body.”
Nunes looked pathetically like an amateur, but he’s hardly a political rookie. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with an agriculture business degree, he was elected to a community college board at age 22.
He won a congressional seat in 2002 in a district that is one of the GOP’s strongest in California. Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 43% to 33%.
By contrast, Schiff’s district is heavily Democratic, about 50% to 18%. He’s considered a fiscal moderate and in Congress joined the Blue Dog Coalition.
Schiff graduated from Stanford as a political science major, and earned his law degree at Harvard. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles for six years. Twice he failed to capture a state Assembly seat. But he persisted and won a state Senate race in 1996.
In 2000, Schiff defeated Republican Rep. Jim Rogan, a Democratic target because he had led the impeachment process against President Clinton. At the time it was the most expensive House race in history.
Schiff is soft-spoken, but he can use his words like a stiletto. If Feinstein, 83, were to retire next year, as often speculated, Schiff would be a logical candidate to replace her. But she seems intent on running.
Schiff will continue to represent a slice of the Left Coast, which stops far short of Nunes’ district.
george.skelton@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATimesSkelton
Nunes, Schiff symbolize California’s red-blue divide
REP. DEVIN NUNES, 43, is a Republican former dairy farmer from the southern San Joaquin Valley. (J. Scott Applewhite Associated Press) REP. ADAM SCHIFF, 56, is a Democratic former federal prosecutor representing parts of Los Angeles. (Nicholas Kamm AFP/Getty Images)
GEORGE SKELTON in sacramento
Two congressmen from the state President Trump seems to despise the most are leading an investigation into whether his campaign team conspired with the Russians. And the two lawmakers couldn’t be more different.
They symbolize, in many ways, the diversity of California and are a microcosm of the sprawling state.
Rep. Devin Nunes, 43, of Tulare is a Republican former dairy farmer from the conservative southern San Joaquin Valley. His county has nearly half a million cows.
Rep. Adam Schiff, 56, of Burbank is a Democratic former federal prosecutor from liberal neighborhoods stretching from Glendale through Hollywood, Los Feliz, Echo Park, western Pasadena and La Crescenta. His district has the Hollywood sign.
Democrats rule politics in California, but are relegated to second fiddle in Washington. So Nunes is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating — at least it’s supposed to be — whether there was any collusion between Trump campaign aides and sinister Russians to hobble Democratic loser Hillary Clinton.
Schiff is the committee’s ranking Democrat. But the only real power he has comes from his ability to articulate and attract a national audience, his savvy as a strategist to prod GOP weaknesses and the discipline to calmly rattle Nunes. He has been doing all this quite well.
California Democrats have been giving Trump a headache, or at least trying to. He lost the state in November by nearly 2 to 1.
Legislative leaders are attempting to declare California a “sanctuary state” to thwart the president’s attempts to deport immigrants here illegally. And while Trump has begun rolling back federal rules intended to fight global warming, California is pressing forward with tough new pollution-reduction requirements for automobiles.
California arguably has the nation’s most aggressive and expansive version of Obamacare, which Democrats and political activists have vigorously fought to preserve while Trump has tried and failed to repeal.
“California in many ways is out of control,” Trump told Fox News last month.
In Nunes, however, Trump seemingly has a soul mate and certainly a loyal follower. The congressman served on his transition team.
The Russian investigation aside, Nunes’ obsessive interest is on attaining more irrigation water for the valley, primarily from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. That has been his legislative focus for years. And he often has tangled with centrist Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her attempts to balance irrigation and the environment.
You name it, his congressional district produces it: wine grapes, raisins, figs, peaches and — increasingly — thirsty almonds and pistachios. Tulare County also leads the nation in dairy sales. The Nunes family, of Portuguese descent, has operated a large dairy farm for three generations.
Nunes rails at “radical environmentalists” who are trying to save threatened salmon and the coastal fishing industry. It was a “man-made drought,” not lack of rain, that created water shortages for farmers the last five years, he has said.
“There was plenty of water,” he contends, but President Obama gave it to fish.
And, while complaining that government isn’t building enough dams, Nunes simultaneously attacks big government, equating Democratic spending to “a broke gambler who desperately keeps doubling down in a vain effort to break even.”
Nunes, like Trump, also is a climate change denier. “Global warming is nonsense,” he has proclaimed.
But these days, Nunes is making headlines as the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who, Schiff contends, is too friendly to the president. It compromises Nunes’ ability, the Democrat says, to conduct an objective investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian operatives.
Schiff is far from the only one. A New York Times editorial criticizing Nunes last week was headlined: “A Lapdog in a Watchdog Role.”
This was after Nunes rushed to the White House with newly learned intelligence that was perhaps relevant to the committee’s investigation, but he didn’t share it with the committee. Nunes later apologized. But some lawmakers from both parties are calling for an independent investigation, a notion Nunes flatly rejects.
“It’s no way to run an investigation,” Schiff told the Los Angeles Times. “You don’t go to someone who is associated with people that are under investigation with evidence and withhold it from the investigatory body.”
Nunes looked pathetically like an amateur, but he’s hardly a political rookie. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with an agriculture business degree, he was elected to a community college board at age 22.
He won a congressional seat in 2002 in a district that is one of the GOP’s strongest in California. Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 43% to 33%.
By contrast, Schiff’s district is heavily Democratic, about 50% to 18%. He’s considered a fiscal moderate and in Congress joined the Blue Dog Coalition.
Schiff graduated from Stanford as a political science major, and earned his law degree at Harvard. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles for six years. Twice he failed to capture a state Assembly seat. But he persisted and won a state Senate race in 1996.
In 2000, Schiff defeated Republican Rep. Jim Rogan, a Democratic target because he had led the impeachment process against President Clinton. At the time it was the most expensive House race in history.
Schiff is soft-spoken, but he can use his words like a stiletto. If Feinstein, 83, were to retire next year, as often speculated, Schiff would be a logical candidate to replace her. But she seems intent on running.
Schiff will continue to represent a slice of the Left Coast, which stops far short of Nunes’ district.
george.skelton@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATimesSkelton
Mar 27, 2017 20:31:52 #
Michael Rich
Loc: Lapine Oregon
Progressive One wrote:
So who shoots or drowns the other first?
Wouldn't that be a adrenalin rush to find out? actually you could buy a one day fishing licence for only 9 bucks .I would provide everything else.
Mar 27, 2017 20:50:22 #
byronglimish wrote:
Wouldn't that be a adrenalin rush to find out? actually you could buy a one day fishing licence for only 9 bucks .I would provide everything else.
Nah..no rush at all..just another episode to address accordingly...........
Mar 27, 2017 20:54:28 #
Journalists say Trump supporters assaulted them
Three portray the president’s fans as the aggressors during a violent rally Saturday.
A SCUFFLE BREAKS out between Trump supporters and counter-demonstrators during a rally Saturday at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach. (Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times)
By Angel Jennings and Anh Do
An OC Weekly reporter and two photographers said Sunday that they were physically assaulted by pro-Trump demonstrators at a Make America Great Again rally in Huntington Beach and are seeking the public’s help in identifying at least one of the people responsible.
Frank Tristan, an intern at the paper, and photographers Julie Leopo and Brian Feinzimer were attacked before one of several counter-demonstrators pepper-sprayed an organizer of Saturday’s event. After Jennifer Sterling was pepper-sprayed, several fights broke out.
A video of the confrontation shows Sterling trying to intervene after a Trump supporter shoved Feinzimer, who was shooting pictures of Leopo being hit with an American flag, then repeatedly punched Tristan. A moment later, Sterling is pepper-sprayed and can be seen staggering around, rubbing her eyes before falling to the ground.
“My photographers and intern were just trying to do their jobs,” OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano said in a statement Sunday. “For that, they got harassed by Trump supporters, then shoved and punched when they tried to defend each other.... I’m proud of them, and we will not be silenced by biddies or bros.”
On Sunday, Leopo posted a picture of a man in a white shirt and faded blue cap on her Facebook page . She asked her followers for help in identifying the man who assaulted her and her colleagues.
“We’ll be looking to refer him to law enforcement,” the post states.
Saturday’s noontime rally at Bolsa Chica State Beach drew hundreds of Trump supporters and was billed as a show of patriotism, a way to celebrate first responders, military veterans, the vice president and the president. It was one of dozens of similar rallies held nationwide.
About two dozen counter-demonstrators, some of whom dressed in black and wore face masks, said they were overwhelmed by Trump supporters and posed no threat.
One stressed that the group used pepper spray only after they were attacked by their rivals.
Travis Guenther, whose wife was also pepper-sprayed, said he was among those who chased the man who sprayed Sterling and struck him with a flag that said, “Trump, Make America Great Again.”
“I hit him five times with the flag over his head,” said Guenther, who yelled at the man as he was detained by law enforcement officials.
“We’re not xenophobic,” Guenther said. “We’re not racist. We’re just proud Americans.”
The three journalists found themselves caught in the middle of Saturday’s fracas.
On Sunday, Leopo said her body still hurt.
“I ache all over,” she said. “What happened was crazy.”
Leopo, 26, stood in front of a banner while photographing the anti-Trump demonstrators, when a woman scanning the crowd zeroed in on her, she said. The woman held an American flag and “she walked directly to me, yelling, ‘Fake news. Fake news.’ She hit my camera, then she hit my arm. I told her to stop, leave me alone,” but the woman continued, Leopo said.
Feinzimer started photographing the incident when the woman turned on him, using the flag to swat his camera, Leopo said.
“I grabbed [the flag] and threw it to the ground and then she grabs my arm,” Feinzimer said Sunday. “It just got so chaotic. There was so much rage and anger in the air.”
A man in the crowd then demanded that Feinzimer pay for the flag while another man in a white T-shirt and faded blue cap shoved the photographer. Because things “happened so fast,” Feinzimer said, he chose to continue “doing my job.”
“I wasn’t so afraid for me, but you have in the back of your mind what’s going on around you and you have to stay aware,” he said.
Tristan, the 21-year-old intern, said he had been reporting on the event all day and noticed that the Trump supporters were the aggressors. In a story published in the OC Weekly , he said they were hurling racial slurs and chanting racist statements at anti-Trump demonstrators.
Video shows Tristan stepping in to stop the man from pushing his colleague. The man turned on Tristan and repeatedly began hitting him in the face and head. That’s when Sterling and others were doused with pepper spray.
“From everything I saw, the counter-protesters and Sterling were trying to defend me from the people beating me,” Tristan said. “Sterling got caught in the middle and was pepper-sprayed. It was not a direct attack on her.”
In all, four counter-demonstrators were arrested at Saturday’s event, authorities said. Three men were arrested on suspicion of illegal use of a Taser, and one woman was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery, said Capt. Kevin Pearsall of California Parks. Leopo said she reported her attack to an officer at the scene but he did not write up a report.
Feinzimer said it’s unfortunate that innocent people were injured exercising their rights.
“It hurts me to see people act this way, to act with such hate,” he said. “I can’t speak to where that hate comes from.”
angel.jennings@latimes.com
Twitter: @AngelJennings
anh.do@latimes.com
Twitter: @newsterrier
Three portray the president’s fans as the aggressors during a violent rally Saturday.
A SCUFFLE BREAKS out between Trump supporters and counter-demonstrators during a rally Saturday at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach. (Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times)
By Angel Jennings and Anh Do
An OC Weekly reporter and two photographers said Sunday that they were physically assaulted by pro-Trump demonstrators at a Make America Great Again rally in Huntington Beach and are seeking the public’s help in identifying at least one of the people responsible.
Frank Tristan, an intern at the paper, and photographers Julie Leopo and Brian Feinzimer were attacked before one of several counter-demonstrators pepper-sprayed an organizer of Saturday’s event. After Jennifer Sterling was pepper-sprayed, several fights broke out.
A video of the confrontation shows Sterling trying to intervene after a Trump supporter shoved Feinzimer, who was shooting pictures of Leopo being hit with an American flag, then repeatedly punched Tristan. A moment later, Sterling is pepper-sprayed and can be seen staggering around, rubbing her eyes before falling to the ground.
“My photographers and intern were just trying to do their jobs,” OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano said in a statement Sunday. “For that, they got harassed by Trump supporters, then shoved and punched when they tried to defend each other.... I’m proud of them, and we will not be silenced by biddies or bros.”
On Sunday, Leopo posted a picture of a man in a white shirt and faded blue cap on her Facebook page . She asked her followers for help in identifying the man who assaulted her and her colleagues.
“We’ll be looking to refer him to law enforcement,” the post states.
Saturday’s noontime rally at Bolsa Chica State Beach drew hundreds of Trump supporters and was billed as a show of patriotism, a way to celebrate first responders, military veterans, the vice president and the president. It was one of dozens of similar rallies held nationwide.
About two dozen counter-demonstrators, some of whom dressed in black and wore face masks, said they were overwhelmed by Trump supporters and posed no threat.
One stressed that the group used pepper spray only after they were attacked by their rivals.
Travis Guenther, whose wife was also pepper-sprayed, said he was among those who chased the man who sprayed Sterling and struck him with a flag that said, “Trump, Make America Great Again.”
“I hit him five times with the flag over his head,” said Guenther, who yelled at the man as he was detained by law enforcement officials.
“We’re not xenophobic,” Guenther said. “We’re not racist. We’re just proud Americans.”
The three journalists found themselves caught in the middle of Saturday’s fracas.
On Sunday, Leopo said her body still hurt.
“I ache all over,” she said. “What happened was crazy.”
Leopo, 26, stood in front of a banner while photographing the anti-Trump demonstrators, when a woman scanning the crowd zeroed in on her, she said. The woman held an American flag and “she walked directly to me, yelling, ‘Fake news. Fake news.’ She hit my camera, then she hit my arm. I told her to stop, leave me alone,” but the woman continued, Leopo said.
Feinzimer started photographing the incident when the woman turned on him, using the flag to swat his camera, Leopo said.
“I grabbed [the flag] and threw it to the ground and then she grabs my arm,” Feinzimer said Sunday. “It just got so chaotic. There was so much rage and anger in the air.”
A man in the crowd then demanded that Feinzimer pay for the flag while another man in a white T-shirt and faded blue cap shoved the photographer. Because things “happened so fast,” Feinzimer said, he chose to continue “doing my job.”
“I wasn’t so afraid for me, but you have in the back of your mind what’s going on around you and you have to stay aware,” he said.
Tristan, the 21-year-old intern, said he had been reporting on the event all day and noticed that the Trump supporters were the aggressors. In a story published in the OC Weekly , he said they were hurling racial slurs and chanting racist statements at anti-Trump demonstrators.
Video shows Tristan stepping in to stop the man from pushing his colleague. The man turned on Tristan and repeatedly began hitting him in the face and head. That’s when Sterling and others were doused with pepper spray.
“From everything I saw, the counter-protesters and Sterling were trying to defend me from the people beating me,” Tristan said. “Sterling got caught in the middle and was pepper-sprayed. It was not a direct attack on her.”
In all, four counter-demonstrators were arrested at Saturday’s event, authorities said. Three men were arrested on suspicion of illegal use of a Taser, and one woman was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery, said Capt. Kevin Pearsall of California Parks. Leopo said she reported her attack to an officer at the scene but he did not write up a report.
Feinzimer said it’s unfortunate that innocent people were injured exercising their rights.
“It hurts me to see people act this way, to act with such hate,” he said. “I can’t speak to where that hate comes from.”
angel.jennings@latimes.com
Twitter: @AngelJennings
anh.do@latimes.com
Twitter: @newsterrier
Mar 27, 2017 20:57:37 #
Michael Rich
Loc: Lapine Oregon
[quote=Progressive One]Nah..no rush at all..just another episode to address accordingly...........[/quote
Any man who say's that he can't be shaken up....either is a fool or has never stepped out.
Any man who say's that he can't be shaken up....either is a fool or has never stepped out.
Mar 27, 2017 21:11:59 #
[quote=byronglimish][quote=Progressive One]Nah..no rush at all..just another episode to address accordingly...........[/quote
Any man who say's that he can't be shaken up....either is a fool or has never stepped out.[/quote]
Some men are not made like the others.....they are their own example of what a man is............
Any man who say's that he can't be shaken up....either is a fool or has never stepped out.[/quote]
Some men are not made like the others.....they are their own example of what a man is............
Mar 27, 2017 21:36:29 #
Michael Rich
Loc: Lapine Oregon
Progressive One wrote:
Some men are not made like the others.....they are their own example of what a man is............
Where do you live? What color is the sky in your world?I know for a fact you can be scared.I have been around real maniacs who could make a keyboard badass pee a little.... Myself,I've been real concerned for my personal safety a time or two.
I wish you could have been there.
Mar 27, 2017 22:27:38 #
byronglimish wrote:
Where do you live? What color is the sky in your world?I know for a fact you can be scared.I have been around real maniacs who could make a keyboard badass pee a little.... Myself,I've been real concerned for my personal safety a time or two.
I wish you could have been there.
I wish you could have been there.
A lot of people know things to be a fact because they ordain them as such.
Mar 27, 2017 22:32:32 #
What does it mean to be a ‘sanctuary campus’?
College presidents weigh in during a panel discussion.
PITZER COLLEGE President Melvin Oliver, center, leads a panel discussion on the future of liberal arts education in today’s political climate. In November, he became one of the first to declare a college as a sanctuary. (Rosanna Xia Los Angeles Times)
By Rosanna Xia
In a lively panel Friday at Pitzer College in Claremont, education leaders and experts on race, immigration and civil rights gathered before dozens of students and professors to discuss the future of liberal arts education in today’s political climate.
“We do have an obligation to create a safe space here, but we will have differences in opinion. We have donors who have threatened to withdraw their resources because we are ‘breaking the law’ — which we are not,” said Melvin Oliver, Pitzer’s new president, who in November became one of the first to declare a college as a sanctuary.
Oliver said that in the days after Donald Trump was elected president, he confronted “all the legal limitations” of what it means to be a sanctuary college.
He and fellow panelists talked about how schools could support their more vulnerable students by establishing DREAM centers, developing concrete policies with campus police on how to interact with immigration enforcement officials, providing summer financial aid and creating a program for naturalization for lawful, permitted residents who are employees on campus.
“When you’re naturalized, you can better defend the members of your family, as well as exercise your voice in the political square,” said Manuel Pastor, a panelist and director of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.
Reed College President John Kroger, who declared his campus a sanctuary days after the November election, added that “as one of our official principles of our school, we don’t get involved in politics. This was always viewed as core to what real belief in academic freedom was. ... But we’ve always had an exception for being engaged on issues that really directly affect our ability to achieve our mission.”
Kroger, who was the attorney general of Oregon before taking the helm at Reed, said that in his first five years as college president, he never had to step into politics.
“And now, it happens about once a week,” he said.
“Because when we’re talking about things like immigration policies, which are restricting where our students come from, where we’re hiring scholars from, the ability of our international students to go home over the holidays — they can’t, because they’re not sure they’re going to make it back — cuts directly to the funding that keeps our research labs open. ... We are going to have to engage on these questions.”
These statements come at a time when more than 600 college and university presidents across the nation have signed an open letter to the country’s leaders pushing for the support and expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama administration program that deferred deportation proceedings against certain young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors but stayed in school and out of trouble.
The leaders of California’s three systems of public higher education also have publicly stated their commitment to the tens of thousands of DACA students who have turned to UC, Cal State and California community colleges for a shot at higher education.
rosanna.xia@latimes.com
College presidents weigh in during a panel discussion.
PITZER COLLEGE President Melvin Oliver, center, leads a panel discussion on the future of liberal arts education in today’s political climate. In November, he became one of the first to declare a college as a sanctuary. (Rosanna Xia Los Angeles Times)
By Rosanna Xia
In a lively panel Friday at Pitzer College in Claremont, education leaders and experts on race, immigration and civil rights gathered before dozens of students and professors to discuss the future of liberal arts education in today’s political climate.
“We do have an obligation to create a safe space here, but we will have differences in opinion. We have donors who have threatened to withdraw their resources because we are ‘breaking the law’ — which we are not,” said Melvin Oliver, Pitzer’s new president, who in November became one of the first to declare a college as a sanctuary.
Oliver said that in the days after Donald Trump was elected president, he confronted “all the legal limitations” of what it means to be a sanctuary college.
He and fellow panelists talked about how schools could support their more vulnerable students by establishing DREAM centers, developing concrete policies with campus police on how to interact with immigration enforcement officials, providing summer financial aid and creating a program for naturalization for lawful, permitted residents who are employees on campus.
“When you’re naturalized, you can better defend the members of your family, as well as exercise your voice in the political square,” said Manuel Pastor, a panelist and director of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.
Reed College President John Kroger, who declared his campus a sanctuary days after the November election, added that “as one of our official principles of our school, we don’t get involved in politics. This was always viewed as core to what real belief in academic freedom was. ... But we’ve always had an exception for being engaged on issues that really directly affect our ability to achieve our mission.”
Kroger, who was the attorney general of Oregon before taking the helm at Reed, said that in his first five years as college president, he never had to step into politics.
“And now, it happens about once a week,” he said.
“Because when we’re talking about things like immigration policies, which are restricting where our students come from, where we’re hiring scholars from, the ability of our international students to go home over the holidays — they can’t, because they’re not sure they’re going to make it back — cuts directly to the funding that keeps our research labs open. ... We are going to have to engage on these questions.”
These statements come at a time when more than 600 college and university presidents across the nation have signed an open letter to the country’s leaders pushing for the support and expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama administration program that deferred deportation proceedings against certain young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors but stayed in school and out of trouble.
The leaders of California’s three systems of public higher education also have publicly stated their commitment to the tens of thousands of DACA students who have turned to UC, Cal State and California community colleges for a shot at higher education.
rosanna.xia@latimes.com
Mar 27, 2017 22:58:26 #
Michael Rich
Loc: Lapine Oregon
Progressive One wrote:
A lot of people know things to be a fact because they ordain them as such.
It's too bad we can't go fishing. I would enjoy teaching you how to expand your thinking....but it's just an idea that will never happen.
Mar 27, 2017 23:13:59 #
byronglimish wrote:
It's too bad we can't go fishing. I would enjoy teaching you how to expand your thinking....but it's just an idea that will never happen.
I've sailed from country to country on a ship once...from alaska to the lower pacific to the south china and other seas...plus i'm not a fisherman...and see what it takes to sail safely, storms and otherwise....so i've done enough sailing.....even came across pirate ships in an undisclosed location but they chill on US Naval Ships....even the white ones.......my homies have boats in Galveston.....they go way out near the oil derricks where the reefs are...i'll pass.....been 15k miles from Houston sitting on water 25k feet deep........i'm good...........
Mar 28, 2017 09:50:19 #
Progressive One wrote:
well...your ghetto, welfare, crack and other backwoods hillbilly cracka ass statements won't help...unlike others, humility got me where I am because I didn't think I knew every gotdamn thing once i reached adulthood....i knew I didn't know shit and needed to become highly educated.....and the higher I progressed the less I realized that I knew beforehand. That is the epitome of humility..
The truth hurts, eh, prog1?
Mar 28, 2017 11:23:02 #
Big Bass wrote:
The truth hurts, eh, prog1?
Nah....you crackas just try to smear others down on your level......i've been a successful professor and ao creates a scenario based on lies and crime while you all go along in silent agreement... same with the ghetto/welfare thing...many of you were/are poor so you create the same for others.......it helps you fulfill your nasty ass ways but it also does not change any of your personal situations.....dishonest ass liars........the kind of people you all are......
Mar 28, 2017 11:43:11 #
Trump’s America
The Home of the Future
Karl Vick / Zephyrhills, Fla.
Every soul Larry Myott encounters on a scoot around Lazy Loop, the narrow main drag of the 154-home trailer park, has a hand raised in welcome and a hello as warm and clear as the sky overhead. On the January morning I rode shotgun, the chipper well-wishers included the guy who, the night before, lost the election for the park's highest elected office ... and lost it to Myott. It is as if the entire enclave--the pool, the smooth black pathways, the clubhouse, all devoted to the exclusive use of residents at least 55 years of age--glides on a thin film of some invisible and frictionless fluid. Maybe cooking oil. Possibly BS.
"Oh, it's bullsh-t," says Myott, who at 73 has given the matter some thought. Resolute good cheer is a conscious choice, he believes, grounded in the reality that physically looms in front of the residents: a miniature lighthouse at the park entrance, its base paved with bricks bearing the names of neighbors who have died (11 last year). Forget it's there and the road outside takes you past a hospital, a nursing home ("with memory care"), a hospice and, off First Avenue, a cemetery.
"Nobody says, 'I'm going to retire to Florida and live in a trailer park,'" says Bill Gorman, who manages business affairs for Sleepy Hollow and 10 other parks. "They say, 'I'm going to move to Florida and play golf, go to the beach, enjoy life.'" The trailer? The trailer is what makes everything else possible. Even if you've never saved for retirement, equity in a "stick house" (as trailer folk call ordinary homes) means you can sell it and pick up a mobile home for a fraction of the price. Peggy and Don Shriner paid $6,000 for a fixer-upper 16 years ago and now spend half the year in Sleepy Hollow, one of 150 trailer parks for seniors in just the eastern half of Pasco County, a formerly rural section of central Florida that lately is playing the role once performed by California: showcase for the future.
How will we live in our golden years? As well as we can, for as long as we can, which at the bare minimum means avoiding institutional care--nursing homes, assisted living, hospitals--as long as possible. The goal is what gerontologists call "aging in place," and in a world that still holds a few happy surprises, one of the happiest is that trailer-park life turns out to be a superior way to achieve it.
Neighbors are close and look after one another. Asphalt paths invite strolling. The cribbage tourneys, bingo and potluck dinners that cram page after page of the park newsletter shift loneliness from a default of old age to a conscious decision.
"And no stairs!" exults Hank Vandergeld, 70, chalking his cue stick at the Sleepy Hollow clubhouse, a modest affair in a modest park populated by retirees who insist they could not be happier to be there. "Save your money," says Vandergeld. "When you're 55-plus, you can come live in one of these places."
"That's the trouble," he adds, after sinking the eight ball, which makes him laugh. "People don't save."
They do not. The queasy-making economic reality of most U.S. households is almost too dire to face. Social Security is good for only so much. Pensions are nearly a thing of the past. And left to themselves to provide for their retirement, most Americans have proved unequal to the task. One in three has not put aside a thin dime toward retirement, according to a 2016 survey. Nearly 6 in 10 have saved less than $10,000.
But all is not lost. About 60% of U.S. households own a home. And the sale of a home opens the door to the possibility of trailer-park life. If that possibility happens not to be one a lot of people have in mind for themselves, what is aging except acceptance of the less-than-foreseen? In a series of accommodations to the inevitable, a mobile home may be just one, albeit the kind that actually keeps a roof over your head. And by the accounts of those already living, quite happily, in the parks, they may turn out to have more going on than is readily apparent to outsiders, sort of like aging.
"It's coming, one way or the other," says Dan Soliman, housing specialist at the AARP Foundation, where experts spend a great deal of time looking hard at the collective reality that individuals may be loath to face. Some 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, a "silver tsunami" of demography that will be followed, before anyone knows it, by millennials, whose prospects are even tougher. "We can either ride this wave and have a lot of fun," says Soliman, "or crash onto the rocks."
Somehow the advantages of senior trailer parks have remained obvious almost exclusively to their residents. It is a success story without official ambassadors, all but unstudied by academics. "Honestly, I think it's because very few people in the academy, especially in business schools, are familiar with parks," says Charles M. Becker, an economics professor at Duke University whose own point of entry was some of his wife's relatives. Their story, by the numbers: sold home for $180,000, bought a used double-wide for $24,000, put $5,000 into fixing it up "and walked away with a pile of cash." Some of the windfall they wisely set aside (an annuity is wise, Becker says) for utilities, taxes and payments on the piece of land the trailer would sit on. But the bottom line shines bright and clear through the gloom.
"You can't buy $30,000 worth of house in a stick-built house without being afraid of the neighborhood you live in," Becker observes. "Trailer parks can be thought of as gated communities for people who aren't so wealthy."
It's certainly a whole new way of thinking about them. The old way everybody already knows. Trailer parks are "the last acceptable prejudice in America," says Andrea Levere, who studies issues of financial security and class as president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development. There may be some basis for the stigma in many of the nation's 44,000 parks. They tend to be operated not by the residents (like the seniors of Sleepy Hollow) but by landlords exploiting the traditional model. The park owners rent tiny patches of land to the people who own the homes perched on it and charge pretty much whatever they like. Landlords have the upper hand because mobile homes tend to be mobile in name only; moving one can cost from $5,000 to many times that. The typical mobile home arrives on wheels and stays put forever, poor people paying the rich.
"It's like owning a Waffle House where the customers are chained to the booths," in the words of Frank Rolfe, who co-owns more than 250 parks across the U.S., while also operating Mobile Home University. The "school," which conducts occasional seminars in hotel conference rooms, advises people looking to invest in parks. Rolfe boasts that mobile-home parks provide the steadiest income stream of any form of commercial real estate, and the highest rate of return. And trends are running their way.
"As America gets poorer, mobile-home parks are the only form of housing devoted to this demographic," Rolfe points out. What's more, the stigma actually works to the advantage of investors. Because local authorities seldom approve new parks, supply remains constant even as demand grows and grows. In the past half-decade, Wall Street has caught the scent. A former Goldman Sachs associate and a Harvard graduate started buying parks, riffing about methamphetamine and SWAT teams. In 2013, private-equity giant Carlyle Group "made a play." Explaining his decision to invest, billionaire Sam Zell declared, "We like the oligopoly nature of our business."
This is where the old folks come in. With a bit of ready cash--in Florida, usually between $20,000 and $40,000 per lot--park residents can throw in together and buy the park they live in. And if the cash is not ready, loans are available, either from banks or from nonprofit Resident Owned Communities USA, based in New Hampshire. The reasons to do this are excellent. In most states, a mobile home is taxed as a vehicle, and loses value the same way a car does. It becomes a "home," however, once its owner buys the land it stands on. And at that point, its value can appreciate.
The transformation is instant and almost magical, like slipping a shoe on Cinderella. Trailer parks immediately go from being nominal clusters of transients to being communities of owners deeply invested in where they live. The legal mechanics are the same as when tenants buy their apartment building, forming a co-op or condominium. Residents then hold their fate in their hands and assess themselves only what fees are necessary for upkeep. In Florida parks, the monthly fee runs $100 to $150 a month. Today more than 700 of the state's 5,000 mobile-home parks are resident-owned, almost all of them by seniors.
After the housing market crash of 2008, when the bursting bubble reduced the value of some traditional homes by half or more, mobile homes in resident-owned parks held far more of their value, dropping by only about 30%. Think about that. Manufactured homes, the "tin cans" or "wobbly boxes" of yore, proved sturdier in the marketplace than homes built with concrete blocks or pressure-treated pine. It made sense only to those who live in them. "It's not the house that held up the value," says Brian Heidman, who retired from a career in real estate to a resident-owned park. "It's the community."
Size doesn't really matter. Nor does income. I spent time at three Zephyrhills senior parks--one rich, one huge, one not very rich at all. Same story everywhere.
In Sleepy Hollow, Peggy Shriner, 75, glances out her window each morning at 8:30, by which time her neighbor, who is in her 80s, usually raises her blinds. The morning the blinds stayed down, Shriner went over. Turns out the neighbor had forgotten to raise her blinds, but her daughter, six hours away, was deeply thankful for Shriner's checking in. "We take care of each other," Shriner explains in the clubhouse, where the afternoon activity is portrait photographs. The park publishes a member guide, not that people don't know everyone already and whom to inquire after.
"You O.K., Linda?" Shriner asks a woman stepping outside a screen door. Recently widowed, Linda pauses for a beat in the doorway, registering what she's being asked. Her answering nod communicates both affirmation--yes, I'm O.K.--and appreciation at being looked after.
Park living reminds Beth Palmer of her years in Africa; she was a missionary in a village of 300 in Sierra Leone. "You'd walk outside, and there was your neighbor," she says. "You had that comfort of someone always being there." For snowbirds, the comparison is with their summer lives in Michigan or Pennsylvania. "Dropping by? Not in Ohio!" says Barb Stein, who has been coming to Sleepy Hollow since the 1980s. "But here people are constantly dropping by."
There may be an element of social leveling at work in trailer parks--the welcome kind. Not everyone comes from the same background, but there is a unity in what they now share. Mobile homes have been built at a higher grade since a federal standard was imposed in the late 1970s, and the 8.5 million units the Census Bureau counts as mobile homes (also called "manufactured housing") run the gamut, from single-wide "park models" to $200,000 modular ranches.
But any will answer the senior urge to downsize an empty nest and to stretch a fixed income. A 2014 Harvard report found a third of the nation's "older adult" population, or nearly 20 million households, spend over 30% of their income on housing (the threshold for "overburdened"). In 9.6 million of those households, spending on housing reaches more than 50% of income.
At Sleepy Hollow residents take a certain pride in frugality--it's possible to spend less than $1,000 a month--and joke about the airs put on at other parks. You hear about Betmar Acres, with its Spanish moss, two swimming pools, new courts for pickleball (a game played at close quarters across a net) and 1,700 homes.
"It's big enough that you don't get to know everybody, so everybody doesn't know your business," says Judi Gearsbeck, on a park tour that, at every turn, puts the lie to her statement. "Here comes pretty much the man-boy of the park," she announces as a fit man in shorts strides past Memory Lane, Betmar's memorial to deceased residents. "He's not quite 60."
Calvin Hall, 59, pauses to brightly explain that he and his husband first bought a lake house in Floral City 15 years ago. But their apprehension about the isolation of living so remotely proved greater than their apprehensions about living in a mobile home ("It was the stigma") and coming out as a same-sex couple. There was acceptance all around. "I would live here year-round," Hall says.
Gearsbeck resumes the tour, pointing out the park's one and only overgrown property, her own corner lot, and the swimming pool a couple put in "for their dogs." She slows to hail a man on an adult tricycle ("Pete recognizes everyone by their voice, because he doesn't see very well") and makes her first ever visit to the park's library. Behind the counter is a familiar face. "Rita has a sister," Gearsbeck notes. "Sometimes she'll wander. I found her one day in the park."
"Yeah, we're looking into a home," Rita says, with no air of complaint, "because my husband is the same way. He doesn't wander yet. I'm the only one who's stable." Rita crosses her fingers. "Let's hope it holds." Back in the golf cart, Gearsbeck confides that Rita "just went through a whole bout of cancer. So we stopped in with the sister, as we do."
Failing health is simply a fact of life, and as with other challenges, from parenthood to combat, shared adversity tends to create a web that in moments of need can be leaned upon.
"You live in a normal community, and you don't really know anybody," says Heidman, in the clubhouse of Grand Horizons, the most upscale park in Zephyrhills. It feels like a subdivision, with homes selling for about $150,000. There's a parking area for the (smaller) motor homes that residents take on trips, but you can't live in one here. Not even single-wides are allowed. Homes must be double-wides; several are made from three pieces, most at a factory an hour away, which residents typically visit to select the features they want.
A home takes three days to make and at least six weeks to install. Heidman took the $1.4 million he got for his waterfront home in Bonita Springs and bought five lots, plus one for his own house. It has a fireplace, spa tub and walls made of Sheetrock, none of that Plasticine finish. There's no escaping the spring in the floor that tells you it's a trailer, but it's a fair trade for what comes wi
The Home of the Future
Karl Vick / Zephyrhills, Fla.
Every soul Larry Myott encounters on a scoot around Lazy Loop, the narrow main drag of the 154-home trailer park, has a hand raised in welcome and a hello as warm and clear as the sky overhead. On the January morning I rode shotgun, the chipper well-wishers included the guy who, the night before, lost the election for the park's highest elected office ... and lost it to Myott. It is as if the entire enclave--the pool, the smooth black pathways, the clubhouse, all devoted to the exclusive use of residents at least 55 years of age--glides on a thin film of some invisible and frictionless fluid. Maybe cooking oil. Possibly BS.
"Oh, it's bullsh-t," says Myott, who at 73 has given the matter some thought. Resolute good cheer is a conscious choice, he believes, grounded in the reality that physically looms in front of the residents: a miniature lighthouse at the park entrance, its base paved with bricks bearing the names of neighbors who have died (11 last year). Forget it's there and the road outside takes you past a hospital, a nursing home ("with memory care"), a hospice and, off First Avenue, a cemetery.
"Nobody says, 'I'm going to retire to Florida and live in a trailer park,'" says Bill Gorman, who manages business affairs for Sleepy Hollow and 10 other parks. "They say, 'I'm going to move to Florida and play golf, go to the beach, enjoy life.'" The trailer? The trailer is what makes everything else possible. Even if you've never saved for retirement, equity in a "stick house" (as trailer folk call ordinary homes) means you can sell it and pick up a mobile home for a fraction of the price. Peggy and Don Shriner paid $6,000 for a fixer-upper 16 years ago and now spend half the year in Sleepy Hollow, one of 150 trailer parks for seniors in just the eastern half of Pasco County, a formerly rural section of central Florida that lately is playing the role once performed by California: showcase for the future.
How will we live in our golden years? As well as we can, for as long as we can, which at the bare minimum means avoiding institutional care--nursing homes, assisted living, hospitals--as long as possible. The goal is what gerontologists call "aging in place," and in a world that still holds a few happy surprises, one of the happiest is that trailer-park life turns out to be a superior way to achieve it.
Neighbors are close and look after one another. Asphalt paths invite strolling. The cribbage tourneys, bingo and potluck dinners that cram page after page of the park newsletter shift loneliness from a default of old age to a conscious decision.
"And no stairs!" exults Hank Vandergeld, 70, chalking his cue stick at the Sleepy Hollow clubhouse, a modest affair in a modest park populated by retirees who insist they could not be happier to be there. "Save your money," says Vandergeld. "When you're 55-plus, you can come live in one of these places."
"That's the trouble," he adds, after sinking the eight ball, which makes him laugh. "People don't save."
They do not. The queasy-making economic reality of most U.S. households is almost too dire to face. Social Security is good for only so much. Pensions are nearly a thing of the past. And left to themselves to provide for their retirement, most Americans have proved unequal to the task. One in three has not put aside a thin dime toward retirement, according to a 2016 survey. Nearly 6 in 10 have saved less than $10,000.
But all is not lost. About 60% of U.S. households own a home. And the sale of a home opens the door to the possibility of trailer-park life. If that possibility happens not to be one a lot of people have in mind for themselves, what is aging except acceptance of the less-than-foreseen? In a series of accommodations to the inevitable, a mobile home may be just one, albeit the kind that actually keeps a roof over your head. And by the accounts of those already living, quite happily, in the parks, they may turn out to have more going on than is readily apparent to outsiders, sort of like aging.
"It's coming, one way or the other," says Dan Soliman, housing specialist at the AARP Foundation, where experts spend a great deal of time looking hard at the collective reality that individuals may be loath to face. Some 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, a "silver tsunami" of demography that will be followed, before anyone knows it, by millennials, whose prospects are even tougher. "We can either ride this wave and have a lot of fun," says Soliman, "or crash onto the rocks."
Somehow the advantages of senior trailer parks have remained obvious almost exclusively to their residents. It is a success story without official ambassadors, all but unstudied by academics. "Honestly, I think it's because very few people in the academy, especially in business schools, are familiar with parks," says Charles M. Becker, an economics professor at Duke University whose own point of entry was some of his wife's relatives. Their story, by the numbers: sold home for $180,000, bought a used double-wide for $24,000, put $5,000 into fixing it up "and walked away with a pile of cash." Some of the windfall they wisely set aside (an annuity is wise, Becker says) for utilities, taxes and payments on the piece of land the trailer would sit on. But the bottom line shines bright and clear through the gloom.
"You can't buy $30,000 worth of house in a stick-built house without being afraid of the neighborhood you live in," Becker observes. "Trailer parks can be thought of as gated communities for people who aren't so wealthy."
It's certainly a whole new way of thinking about them. The old way everybody already knows. Trailer parks are "the last acceptable prejudice in America," says Andrea Levere, who studies issues of financial security and class as president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development. There may be some basis for the stigma in many of the nation's 44,000 parks. They tend to be operated not by the residents (like the seniors of Sleepy Hollow) but by landlords exploiting the traditional model. The park owners rent tiny patches of land to the people who own the homes perched on it and charge pretty much whatever they like. Landlords have the upper hand because mobile homes tend to be mobile in name only; moving one can cost from $5,000 to many times that. The typical mobile home arrives on wheels and stays put forever, poor people paying the rich.
"It's like owning a Waffle House where the customers are chained to the booths," in the words of Frank Rolfe, who co-owns more than 250 parks across the U.S., while also operating Mobile Home University. The "school," which conducts occasional seminars in hotel conference rooms, advises people looking to invest in parks. Rolfe boasts that mobile-home parks provide the steadiest income stream of any form of commercial real estate, and the highest rate of return. And trends are running their way.
"As America gets poorer, mobile-home parks are the only form of housing devoted to this demographic," Rolfe points out. What's more, the stigma actually works to the advantage of investors. Because local authorities seldom approve new parks, supply remains constant even as demand grows and grows. In the past half-decade, Wall Street has caught the scent. A former Goldman Sachs associate and a Harvard graduate started buying parks, riffing about methamphetamine and SWAT teams. In 2013, private-equity giant Carlyle Group "made a play." Explaining his decision to invest, billionaire Sam Zell declared, "We like the oligopoly nature of our business."
This is where the old folks come in. With a bit of ready cash--in Florida, usually between $20,000 and $40,000 per lot--park residents can throw in together and buy the park they live in. And if the cash is not ready, loans are available, either from banks or from nonprofit Resident Owned Communities USA, based in New Hampshire. The reasons to do this are excellent. In most states, a mobile home is taxed as a vehicle, and loses value the same way a car does. It becomes a "home," however, once its owner buys the land it stands on. And at that point, its value can appreciate.
The transformation is instant and almost magical, like slipping a shoe on Cinderella. Trailer parks immediately go from being nominal clusters of transients to being communities of owners deeply invested in where they live. The legal mechanics are the same as when tenants buy their apartment building, forming a co-op or condominium. Residents then hold their fate in their hands and assess themselves only what fees are necessary for upkeep. In Florida parks, the monthly fee runs $100 to $150 a month. Today more than 700 of the state's 5,000 mobile-home parks are resident-owned, almost all of them by seniors.
After the housing market crash of 2008, when the bursting bubble reduced the value of some traditional homes by half or more, mobile homes in resident-owned parks held far more of their value, dropping by only about 30%. Think about that. Manufactured homes, the "tin cans" or "wobbly boxes" of yore, proved sturdier in the marketplace than homes built with concrete blocks or pressure-treated pine. It made sense only to those who live in them. "It's not the house that held up the value," says Brian Heidman, who retired from a career in real estate to a resident-owned park. "It's the community."
Size doesn't really matter. Nor does income. I spent time at three Zephyrhills senior parks--one rich, one huge, one not very rich at all. Same story everywhere.
In Sleepy Hollow, Peggy Shriner, 75, glances out her window each morning at 8:30, by which time her neighbor, who is in her 80s, usually raises her blinds. The morning the blinds stayed down, Shriner went over. Turns out the neighbor had forgotten to raise her blinds, but her daughter, six hours away, was deeply thankful for Shriner's checking in. "We take care of each other," Shriner explains in the clubhouse, where the afternoon activity is portrait photographs. The park publishes a member guide, not that people don't know everyone already and whom to inquire after.
"You O.K., Linda?" Shriner asks a woman stepping outside a screen door. Recently widowed, Linda pauses for a beat in the doorway, registering what she's being asked. Her answering nod communicates both affirmation--yes, I'm O.K.--and appreciation at being looked after.
Park living reminds Beth Palmer of her years in Africa; she was a missionary in a village of 300 in Sierra Leone. "You'd walk outside, and there was your neighbor," she says. "You had that comfort of someone always being there." For snowbirds, the comparison is with their summer lives in Michigan or Pennsylvania. "Dropping by? Not in Ohio!" says Barb Stein, who has been coming to Sleepy Hollow since the 1980s. "But here people are constantly dropping by."
There may be an element of social leveling at work in trailer parks--the welcome kind. Not everyone comes from the same background, but there is a unity in what they now share. Mobile homes have been built at a higher grade since a federal standard was imposed in the late 1970s, and the 8.5 million units the Census Bureau counts as mobile homes (also called "manufactured housing") run the gamut, from single-wide "park models" to $200,000 modular ranches.
But any will answer the senior urge to downsize an empty nest and to stretch a fixed income. A 2014 Harvard report found a third of the nation's "older adult" population, or nearly 20 million households, spend over 30% of their income on housing (the threshold for "overburdened"). In 9.6 million of those households, spending on housing reaches more than 50% of income.
At Sleepy Hollow residents take a certain pride in frugality--it's possible to spend less than $1,000 a month--and joke about the airs put on at other parks. You hear about Betmar Acres, with its Spanish moss, two swimming pools, new courts for pickleball (a game played at close quarters across a net) and 1,700 homes.
"It's big enough that you don't get to know everybody, so everybody doesn't know your business," says Judi Gearsbeck, on a park tour that, at every turn, puts the lie to her statement. "Here comes pretty much the man-boy of the park," she announces as a fit man in shorts strides past Memory Lane, Betmar's memorial to deceased residents. "He's not quite 60."
Calvin Hall, 59, pauses to brightly explain that he and his husband first bought a lake house in Floral City 15 years ago. But their apprehension about the isolation of living so remotely proved greater than their apprehensions about living in a mobile home ("It was the stigma") and coming out as a same-sex couple. There was acceptance all around. "I would live here year-round," Hall says.
Gearsbeck resumes the tour, pointing out the park's one and only overgrown property, her own corner lot, and the swimming pool a couple put in "for their dogs." She slows to hail a man on an adult tricycle ("Pete recognizes everyone by their voice, because he doesn't see very well") and makes her first ever visit to the park's library. Behind the counter is a familiar face. "Rita has a sister," Gearsbeck notes. "Sometimes she'll wander. I found her one day in the park."
"Yeah, we're looking into a home," Rita says, with no air of complaint, "because my husband is the same way. He doesn't wander yet. I'm the only one who's stable." Rita crosses her fingers. "Let's hope it holds." Back in the golf cart, Gearsbeck confides that Rita "just went through a whole bout of cancer. So we stopped in with the sister, as we do."
Failing health is simply a fact of life, and as with other challenges, from parenthood to combat, shared adversity tends to create a web that in moments of need can be leaned upon.
"You live in a normal community, and you don't really know anybody," says Heidman, in the clubhouse of Grand Horizons, the most upscale park in Zephyrhills. It feels like a subdivision, with homes selling for about $150,000. There's a parking area for the (smaller) motor homes that residents take on trips, but you can't live in one here. Not even single-wides are allowed. Homes must be double-wides; several are made from three pieces, most at a factory an hour away, which residents typically visit to select the features they want.
A home takes three days to make and at least six weeks to install. Heidman took the $1.4 million he got for his waterfront home in Bonita Springs and bought five lots, plus one for his own house. It has a fireplace, spa tub and walls made of Sheetrock, none of that Plasticine finish. There's no escaping the spring in the floor that tells you it's a trailer, but it's a fair trade for what comes wi
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