250 Affordable Homes Coming to Erie: Now to Survive the Next Five Winters

If you are reading this, it means you aren't dead. Congratulations on making it this far through the winter. In honor of your crowning achievement, the city of Erie has announced plans to award you 250 houses in the next five years. There's only one catch; it falls somewhere between now and the next five years.

Infinite Erie gathered recently to discuss a plan to address the homeless dilemma plaguing people who are homeless. Their solution; use state funding to produce affordable housing over the next five years.

Whether the houses will be affordable in five years greatly depends on whether they will be affordable in five years. What we can determine, however, is that the future is uncertain. Who knows what nut case will take office in 2028? Economics is only as sustainable as whoever the heck makes it sustainable.

Meanwhile, Erie's homeless population continues to live in the cold. We're sure this is not such a big deal given the locals have evolved to survive below zero temperatures. We're sure their mutated bodies can handle five years of wind chill before the city gives them a house. Of course, if the economy tanks and the homeless population doubles by then, you will be right back to where you started in 5 years. On the other hand, if the city starts to thrive in such a way that the homeless are no longer homeless, you would have built 250 houses for no reason.

Affordability greatly depends on the political powers that be and the type of job they are doing. We would like to promise that what classifies as affordable housing now will still classify in five years. Unfortunately, if an American Kim Jong Un gets elected in 2028, we can't promise you won't be struggling to get a mortgage on a cardboard box.

Building more houses sounds great. We're just trying to figure out where all the houses went that you had before. Reports suggest that the homeless population is a consistent concern. Coincidentally, the overall population is decreasing by the thousands. Are people taking their houses with them when they move away? Or are you just destroying them right after people leave? Sounds like you could give these people a house just by using the ones people are leaving behind.

One thing we know for sure is that Erie is an ideal place to go when you are homeless. It may get cold, but the lake effect ensures there's enough snow to build your own igloo.

Yes, very attractive. People are looking at Erie and saying "I want to build my homelessness there."

Like building your own igloo?

For a city that builds it's economy on nonprofits to help the poor, it's ironic it takes forever for the city to deliver such services. I'm not saying that building 250 houses is a quick process. I am just saying that building 250 livable spaces doesn't take five years. Why in the world is the Inifinite Erie nonprofit proposing a longterm solution to something that can be resolved much quicker? Does the word "infinite" suggest things have to take an infinite amount of time? I guess we have to ask the guy with a frost bitten foot.