[log in to unmask] wrote:

It is difficult to have so much destruction of character and community
happening all around us.

In Boise our officials are allowing developers to tear out 2 full blocks of
historic homes and an old school from 1894, which are all inside a national
historic preservation district and a local historic conservation district.
Century old trees are being killed as well, all for some generic box
apartments and parking lots.  Some of these old buildings are one of a kind.
The location of the destruction rips into the safety, continuity, and func
tion of the remaining neighborhood.  The pain and loss is worse because there
are 47 city blocks of redevelopment land available just within a stone's
throw.  We are all fearful of the precedents being set to destroy block after
block of heritage. The city refuses to respond to questions about where they
will draw the line, the preservation and conservation designations apparently
having no value.

The developers have already stated that they intend to encroach further into
this historic neighborhood, tearing down modest historic homes to build much
larger and more expensive ones.  Ironic that we aren't allowed to make
changes to the fronts and sides of our homes, yet developers can come in and
tear down houses and build new ones with vinyl windows, cheap siding, and bad
roof pitches.  Investing in Boise was one of the worst decisions in our
lives, a decade of full out assaults by officials and developers.  Greed
determines everything here.  Schools, children, neighborhoods, and heritage
are given no value whatsoever.  The air quality is getting bad enough that we
will have to leave anyway, but we grieve for what this city used to be, and
might have been.

Good luck to all of you who fight to save old places and authentic character.
 I feel driven out of my mind with the endless and senseless brutality and
waste.  In the case of our old neighborhood, it has been very much like
seeing someone you love deliberately hacked to death, a prolonged agony.
There is a term, Schadenfreude:  "To take malicious satisfaction in the
misfortune of others."  This is what we are experiencing from too many local
officials and developers, several of them constantly telling us they plan to
bulldoze our homes and gut the neighborhood.  At times the threats and stress
becomes unbearable.  Many have fled, leaving their homes standing vacant.
The officials aren't even trying to go around the edges of the neighborhood,
or respecting the function of what is here, instead choosing to rip the very
heart out and to degrade every single school environment and pedestrian
route.  We are filled with the pain each and every day these many long years,
with conditions getting worse every single month, every single year.
Neighborhood streets are being pitted against each other by the officials,
with the current status being several more moneyed streets ganged up against
the school streets and the children.  I can't describe how I'm feeling about
human nature and what is happening here.