The Plaza Hotel in New York has been reconfigured to include 181 condominium units. 100 have been sold. But no one is there. This is because the condominium purchasers are using these units as second homes, or third homes, or more. They only come now and then. Every night the building is basically deserted. This was discussed is an unpleasant article in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Styles Section, which focussed on one family, who had purchased two units, a two-bedroom for themselves, and a one-bedroom for their children to use. The one-bedroom cost $5.8 million dollars.
We have friends who live in Bethesda. Five years ago they bought a one bedroom apartment in a downtown Washington building. It is their weekend home. Other of the owners of units in the building (including one family we know–we think it is the same building) use the units only on weekdays and retreat to rural or suburban weekend homes. The building is always partially, or largely, empty.
Contrast this with the people who are homeless. Or those who are losing their homes because of the current mortgage crisis.
Then go back to yesterday’s extraordinary “No Child”. Sun says that the Congressional district in the Bronx where her school is has the distinction of being the poorest district in the country, while an 18 minute IRT ride to mid-town Manhattan will lead you to the richest. I don’t know if this is factually true or not. But the story does tie into the Plaza Hotel.
Many people are extraordinarily rich. Many, many, many, many are equally poor. And of course, these distinctions are self-perpetuating. When you get rich enough, you will stay rich, if only because your wealth earns more than you could possibly ever spend. When you are poor, you normally have no chance to change your situation. Especially in a country where there are drugs, gangs, broken families (or where there were never any families), poor schools, too many in prison, guns, etc.
Go back to “No Child”. The American system of letting small, wealthy suburban enclaves have their own public school systems, which create stwo tracks of education, feeds on itself by ensuring that those who can afford it will move into those wealthy school districts and forsake the others. And those who can afford it, might move into districts with poorer schools, but be relatively unconcerned because they can send their children to elite private schools.
This is clearly the wrong track. Of course a mega-merger would just at this point dumb down the better schools. We are stuck in an enigma. The Iraq of America.
