gaithersblog.net

…with a few interesting articles I’ve read over the past few days:

The first few are from the Examiner, and written by Kathleen Miller:

• Intersection a hot spot of immigrant frustration
  

  Nonetheless, throughout 2007, 50 to 80 workers a day looked for jobs at the Exxon and 7-Eleven at the intersection [of University Boulevard and Piney Branch Road], roughly the same number who signed up for work at [Casa’s day laborer] center. Now, with the downturn in the economy, those numbers have doubled, according to Hispanic community police liaison Officer Luis Hurtado.

• Immigrant groups push for $15M to speed up citizenship process
  

  Immigrant advocates are lobbying Washington area state and local governments, plus private organizations, for $15 million to help legal permanent residents in the region become citizens.

  “I am just wondering why this is necessary — my mom got her citizenship without the help of any centers,” Virginia Del. Jeff Frederick said. “I feel like, if we’ve got $15 million, let’s go build some roads.”

• Gaithersburg considering street cameras
  

  Gaithersburg leaders may turn to surveillance cameras on city streets and license plate scanner systems that check plates regardless of suspicion of guilt.

• Maryland considers adding tolls on I-270, Beltway
  

  State transportation officials said they are studying the use of tolls on two Montgomery-area highways to combat congestion in the rapidly growing region, and hope to meet with the public about the potential projects in the fall.

• Budget troubles to curtail Montgomery planning panel’s agenda
  

  Budget woes will force Montgomery’s Planning Department to delay or abandon county environmental protection initiatives, traffic-relief studies and some of the transportation and zoning planning necessary in rapidly growing Bethesda next year, planning officials said Tuesday.

In the Frederick News-Post, Sarah Fortney writes, Walkersville — English: official language:

Town commissioners voted unanimously to designate English as Walkersville’s official language.

A Gazette-written story in the Washington Post gives a little more background on Gaithersburg’s new Enterprise Zone:

The move, made to enhance economic development and job creation in targeted revitalization areas, is to help one of Montgomery County’s historic districts. Olde Towne Gaithersburg is the site of the city’s original mercantile district, spurred by the arrival of the B&O Railroad in 1873. The area flourished for decades as shops and businesses served the needs of the local agricultural-based economy. However, in the 1930’s a six-lane bridge, erected to address a rail safety issue, virtually obscured the view of Olde Towne and distanced potential shoppers from the area, according to state and county information.

Actually, I don’t recall the old bridge, which was torn down and replaced in the 1980s, having six lanes.

Finally, Raymond McCaffrey writes in the Washington Post, Man to Serve 10 Years for 2006 Crash That Killed 2:

A 27-year-old man pleaded guilty yesterday and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a drunken-driving accident in Howard County in 2006 that killed a Marine and his date.

In imposing the sentence, Circuit Court Judge Louis A. Becker said he considered that Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano is an illegal immigrant and that his blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit on the night of the crash.

The Baltimore Sun also has a story on this, written by Tyeesha Dixon:

The sentence imposed by Becker exceeds suggested state guidelines for the charges. The judge said he made his decision “primarily because of the high alcohol read.” Morales-Soriano’s blood-alcohol level was 0.32 percent, four times the legal limit, at the time of the crash, police have said.

Becker said he also considered an unusual facet of the case: Morales-Soriano, a native of Mexico, was living in the country illegally.

”This court cannot ignore that the defendant has violated the law with his illegal presence here,” Becker said.

The Manhattan Institute just released a study on Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States (PDF available here). Quoting the Executive Summary:

This report introduces a quantitative index that measures the degree of similarity between native- and foreign-born adults in the United States. It is the ability to distinguish the latter group from the former that we mean when we use the term “assimilation.” The Index of Immigrant Assimilation relies on Census Bureau data available in some form since 1900 and as current as the year before last. The index reveals great diversity in the experiences of individual immigrant groups, which differ from each other almost as much as they differ from the native-born. They vary significantly in the extent to which their earnings have increased, their rate of learning the English language, and progress toward citizenship. Mexican immigrants, the largest group and the focus of most current immigration policy debates, have assimilated slowly, but their experience is not representative of the entire immigrant population.

Collective assimilation rates are lower than they were a century ago, although no lower than they have been in recent decades. And this is true despite the fact that recent immigrants have arrived less assimilated than their predecessors and in very large numbers. In addition to country of origin, the Index categorizes groups on the basis of date of arrival, age, and place of residence. Some groups have done far better or worse than the Index as a whole; Assimilation also varies considerably across metropolitan areas.

Here are some of the Index’s significant findings:

• The degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, although low by historical standards, has held steady since 1990. Assimilation declined during the 1980s, remained stable through the 1990s, and has actually increased slightly over the past few years.

Beyond presenting a snapshot of the degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, the assimilation index can be used to track the progress of immigrants who arrived in the United States at a common point in time. This simple extension shows that the relative stability of immigrant assimilation since 1990 masks two important and countervailing trends.

• Newly arrived immigrants of the early 21st century have assimilation index values lower than the newly arrived immigrants of the early 20th century. Growth in the immigrant population usually lowers the assimilation index because newly arrived immigrants drag down the average for the group as a whole. This phenomenon can be seen between 1900 and 1920 and again in the 1980s. The stability of the assimilation index since 1990 is therefore remarkable in light of the rapid growth of the immigrant population, which doubled between 1990 and 2006.
• Immigrants of the past quarter-century have assimilated more rapidly than their counterparts of a century ago, even though they are more distinct from the native population upon arrival. The increase in the rate of assimilation among recently arrived immigrants explains why the overall index has remained stable, even though the immigrant population has grown rapidly.
• Yet the current level of assimilation remains lower than it was at any point during the early 20th century wave of immigration.

This study is of course being written about extensively in the press, and of course is being spun in multiple directions.

In the Washington Post, N.C. Aizenman writes Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly:

Immigrants of the past quarter-century have been assimilating in the United States at a notably faster rate than did previous generations, according to a study released today.

Modern-day immigrants arrive with substantially lower levels of English ability and earning power than those who entered during the last great immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century. The gap between today’s foreign-born and native populations remains far wider than it was in the early 1900s and is particularly large in the case of Mexican immigrants, the report said.

The report found, however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.

In the New York Sun, Howard Husock, vice president for Policy Research at the Manhattan Institute, writes an article headlined The Assimilation Factor:

It is a mistake, though, to think that Americans are more worried about who has a green card than they are about immigrant assimilation, a less discussed matter. The idea that immigrants should, and can, become Americans has been a powerful one, a reflection of the fact that ours is a society based on values and laws, rather than a single faith and a common blood.

Lately, discussing immigrant assimilation has become less than acceptable in polite company out of a concern that assimilation imposes Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture on others. But the majority thinks that newcomers should learn English, which is endorsed by 87% of Americans in one Rasmussen survey, and become American citizens. This makes clear that, notwithstanding the affection for multiculturalism among elites, average Americans still believe in the melting pot.

But the most striking finding is much less positive. The current overall assimilation level for all immigrant groups combined, measured on a scale of zero to 100, is, at 28, lower now than it was during the great immigration wave of the early 20th century, when it never went below 32. What’s more, the immigrant group that is by far the largest is also the least assimilated. On the zero-to-100 scale, Mexicans — 11 million emigrated to America between 1980 and 2006 — score only 13.

In Newsday, Olivia Winslow writes Study finds Salvadorans among least assimilated:

Salvadorans, according to the report’s assimilation index, score just above Mexicans and behind other groups.

To the Rev. Allan Ramirez, pastor of the Brookville Reformed Church and an immigrant advocate, it’s easy to see why. He said many Central Americans and Mexicans come here “at the entry level. They come in as dishwashers, they come in as landscapers … They are unlike the economic elite, who come in with bank accounts in Switzerland and Miami,” holding U.S. visas. So it takes the working poor “longer to get into the mainstream.”

Patrick Young, program director of the Central American Refugee Center in Brentwood, said about 80 percent of Salvadorans are in the United States legally, most speak English and most have been here for more than 15 years. Many, he said, had progressed from being day laborers to small business owners.

Young was skeptical of the report’s focus, calling it “pseudoscience” that amounts to which immigrant group “we love more.”

Gaithersburg is, of course, also a popular destination for Salvadorans.

Eunice Moscoso of Cox News Service writes via Deseret News, Slowdown found in assimilation of immigrants:

“The nation’s capacity to integrate new immigrants is strong,” said Jacob Vigdor, an associate professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University.

But the progress “is not present for all groups and in particular, it’s not present among some of the Latin American immigrants that are at the heart of the immigration debate these days,” he added.

Vigdor said there could be many reasons why Mexicans have lower rates of assimilation, including that they are closer to their home country, they have more chances to speak Spanish, and they mostly come for economic reasons as opposed to immigrants who are fleeing dangerous regimes and fear going back. For example, Vietnamese immigrants had a strong incentive to accept the United States as their homeland, he said.

In addition, many Mexican immigrants are in the United States illegally and therefore are unable to meet many of the criteria for assimilation.

Haya El Nasser writes in USA Today, Study: Some immigrants assimilate faster:

Some immigrants, such as Canadians, fit in well culturally but not in civic involvement because they don’t seek U.S. citizenship, Vigdor’s report says. Mexicans assimilate better culturally than Vietnamese but rank lower economically.

Mexicans have the lowest civic assimilation of any immigrant group, the report says.

“The long-term question is how do the children and grandchildren of immigrants do?” says Jeffrey Passel, demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “Those are the groups who really do the integrating.”

Passel says 30% of all immigrants are in the USA illegally.

That may be the long-term question, but I guess that one would also want to know about the immediate impact on existing communities with large, persistent new-immigrant populations, especially those which are slow to assimilate. With this dip in the assimilation index approaching the two-decade mark, the fact that the grandchildren of immigrants might be better-assimilated is little help in staving off long-term effects.

An unsigned post in the Free Exchange blog on the Economist’s website mentions this study in passing,

That the pull factor of economic conditions is key has important implications for the prospects of the immigrant population. A new study from the Manhattan Institute has found that today’s immigrants are assimilating—in economic, cultural, and civic terms—much faster than did previous immigrant cohorts.

But more interesting in that post is a reference to another article:

Writing a VoxEU, Drew Keeling explains that during past immigration episodes, it was widely assumed that physical barriers (such as the cost of travel) were the only things holding back an unstoppable flood of migrants from Europe. But this assessment may be false. As Mr Keeling notes, trans-Atlantic passenger volume had far more to do with economic conditions in America than with the price of a boat ticket.

Quoting Keeling:

My findings suggest that the uncertainties and hazards of working in distant foreign lands were probably greater deterrents to mass migration than travel costs were in the past or legal barriers are now. From the deserts of Arizona to the coastline of Spain, risks and business cycles are still important factors influencing international migration nowadays. They may therefore turn out to be even more important in shaping migration levels than border controls, which are often problematic, hotly debated, and difficult to enforce.

One might wonder about the historical level of risk associated with immigration, legal or otherwise, to, say, Montgomery County.

Today’s Washington Times has an interesting story by Seth McLaughlin, for which he interviewed Virgina Senator James Webb. Quoting:

“On the one hand, there are going to be people who don’t like that [state and local governments taking positions on illegal immigration], but on the other hand, they still want us to vote for such things as the right of a local community to create a sanctuary,” Mr. Webb said. “So if a local community under our system should have the right to create sanctuaries, the local community should have the right to create restrictions when people truly are illegal.”

“Here is the problem. There’s two different strains here,” he said. “One side is not going to be emotionally satisfied unless everyone here is legalized and the other side is not going to be emotionally satisfied unless every single illegal is gone. Between these two emotional extremes is the question of whether you really want a practical solution or not. That’s where I was trying to go during the debate.”

Bill Turque writes in the Washington Post:

The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge’s ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants.

By my reckoning, this would appear to take Herndon back to Square One: They don’t have an enforceable anti-solicitation ordinance, in large part because of their unwillingness to make the day laborer center “permanent” and keep it open to illegals (and yes, the Court’s opinion that these things are important). And now they won’t have a day laborer center at all, so the only option that appears to be left to the day laborers — illegal and, to the extent such exist, legal alike — is hanging out on street corners and 7-Eleven parking lots. Mayor DeBenedittis claims that they still have other ways to deal with the problem, e.g. “zoning and traffic ordinances”.

Perhaps one thing Herndon could do would be to take the approach of Vista, California, which recently decided to require those who hire laborers off the streets to get a permit to do so. In this case, the fight is not over the permit requirement, but rather over the question of whether the names of the those who obtain permits should be released to the public. This might not put an end to the day laborer solicitation, but it could possibly help reduce the demand for those services, and if the privacy issues can be resolved, it does open up the possibility that adherence to hiring laws on the part of those who obtain permits could be subject to verification.

Herndon also does have the option of fixing their anti-solicitation ordinance by making it be dependent on the existence of a hiring site (thus resolving the permanent/temporary issue) and biting the bullet and simply allowing the existing day laborer center to quietly operate just as it has for the last couple of years. This wouldn’t calm the complaints of those who oppose the center on principal, but it would help serve the public interest in avoiding the the very real problems associated with ad hoc hiring sites.

Kathleen Miller writes:

Police officials from Washington, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County said Wednesday they do not have any agreements to accept ID cards issued by a Maryland pro-immigrant advocacy organization as valid identification, contrary to the claims of the group’s leaders.

Montgomery police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said: “We do not have an agreement with them.”

“If the police departments are expressing another policy, we will obviously have a conversation directly with them about the utility of accepting the identification,” [CASA spokeswoman Kim] Propeack said in an e-mail.

The Washington Post has been more interesting over the past few days than has this week’s Gazette, so, given limited time this week, I’ll round up some of the articles from the Post:

• Pamela Constable writes, Sometimes, A Labor Day:
  

  This has been a tense summer for the men who arrive each morning at the Center for Employment and Training in Gaithersburg, operated by the nonprofit CASA de Maryland. Many have no legal documents. They have anxiously followed the news of Virginia communities passing laws against illegal immigrants, of stepped-up factory raids and deportations. And they hear the angry voices.

  But no worker is asked whether he is in the country legally, and it is assumed that many are not. On the front table is a stack of brochures that explain in Spanish what to do in case of an immigration raid. “Don’t lie. . . . Don’t turn over false documents. . . . Don’t discuss your migratory status. . . . Ask to speak to a lawyer . . . ask to see a warrant . . . contact your consulate.”

  And I have to give this guy credit; this is one of the first times I’ve heard a CASA employee talking sense:

  “Some guys still prefer to wait for jobs outside the 7-Eleven. They say it gives them more freedom. But what they really want is to be drinking a beer and hiding it behind the dumpster,” says German Reyes, a staff member at the trailer. “This is bad for everyone. It is not a question of freedom. It’s a question of discipline and order.”

• Bill Turque writes, Laborer Ruling a Setback for Herndon:
  

  A Fairfax Circuit Court judge threw out Herndon’s anti-solicitation ordinance yesterday, finding that the town’s two-year-old prohibition against laborers and motorists discussing employment on the streets violates First Amendment rights to free speech.

  The third prong is where the town falls short, [Judge Leslie] Alden said, noting that governments restricting public speech must “open ample alternative channels” for communication of the prohibited speech.

  Alden said the Herndon Official Workers Center is not adequate because it is described in the ordinance as a temporary site. She also cited Reston Interfaith’s agreement with the town, which was based on a temporary permit.

  The bar on solicitation described in the ordinance, however, is permanent.

• Karin Brulliard writes, Immigrant Laws Tread Uncharted Legal Path:
  

  As officials in places such as Prince William County increasingly respond to public discontent over illegal immigration by passing ordinances, law scholars say a key question remains: Are local regulations legal?

  For now, they say, some things are clear. The Supreme Court has ruled that true immigration matters — who enters and leaves the United States — fall under the federal government’s realm alone. When it comes to laws related to noncitizens, the Constitution invalidates, or “preempts,” state laws that clearly conflict with federal laws or that courts interpret to be ground that Congress intended to dominate.

  That is where things get hazy, experts say.

  As the Virginia task force’s co-chairman, Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), put it: “I’ve been working on this for three years, and everybody is confused about what you can and can’t do. . . . You ask four attorneys, and you’ll get four answers.”

  Albo, himself a lawyer, asked whether state police could arrest people who approached them and said they had expired visas. Probably not, the lawyers said, because that is a civil immigration violation. And if the person said he had entered the country illegally? Probably so, he was told, because that is a criminal violation.

• Spencer S. Hsu writes, Planned Crackdown on Immigrants Denounced:
  

  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO this week separately assailed a new White House-backed crackdown on illegal immigration, warning of massive disruptions to the economy and headaches for U.S. citizens if the proposal goes ahead as planned in the coming days.

  Under the new rules, set to take effect on Sept. 14, employers that receive “no-match” letters have 90 days to resolve discrepancies. If they do not, the DHS may conclude that employers knowingly violated the law by employing illegal workers, opening the door to fines and even criminal arrests.

  That approach marks a major change. The Social Security Administration has long sent “no-match” letters, and it has found that 4 to 10 percent of workers have suspect numbers because of typographical errors, name changes resulting from marriage or multiple surnames, as well as fraud. But, until now, it has not held employers liable.

• Nick Miroff writes, A Strong, but Divisive, Voice for Immigrants:
  

  Twelve years ago, Ricardo Juarez was an unemployed government clerk standing in the dark on a riverbank outside Eagle Pass, Tex. He had no particular American dream in mind, he says, no vision of white picket fences or the Liberty torch. The youngest male in a family of 12 siblings, Juarez was mostly thinking about food. He and a group of other migrants set their inner tubes into the swirling blackness of the Rio Grande and let the current carry them across.

• Andrea Hopkins of Reuters writes, U.S. immigrants worry as families face deportation:
  

  When 300 U.S. immigration agents surrounded the chicken processing plant where Danny Alvarez-Reyes works, he did the only thing he could think of: he gave his coat to a scared friend determined to hide in the walk-in freezer.

• Tim Craig writes, Va. Republican Bill Would Bar Illegal Immigrants From College:
  

  Virginia Republicans announced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit public colleges and universities from accepting illegal immigrants even if they attended a public high school and were brought to the United States at an early age by their parents.

• Chris Robinson (who once again has been very busy) writes, Historic Gaithersbug district waits for a revamped future:
  

  When Alex Zeppos co-opened Growlers brewpub in Gaithersburg last summer, he was hopeful for the promise of revitalization presented by the Olde Towne Master Plan.

  But about nine months later, development in the historic district remains stalled, there’s nothing to encourage after-hours walkabout traffic and the specter of violent crime continues to haunt the area, Zeppos said.

  I think that this is a growing, major issue, and it is going to take not just money, but some real vision and courage to turn things around. Where the courage is going to come in to play is that I actually don’t see how a major turnaround of the sort envisioned in the Olde Towne Master Plan is going to come to pass unless there are significant changes in the Olde Towne housing stock. The walkable downtown, with a vibrant retail environment that stays open well into the evening, is only going to happen if there are customers for those establishments. Jim Clifford’s proposed project is a great start, and I hope that it actually happens. But if the revitalization is going to happen, there will be increasing pressure to redevelop, for example, up the North Summit corridor, potentially creating a swath of new development going all the way up to the Hidden Creek project. Such redevelopment would likely come under a great deal of fire from affordable housing advocates, and likely some Council members.

  And just as a side note, although the article calls the old downtown a “historic district”, that area has no historic designation. The major exception to that is the building that houses Mr. Zeppos’ business, the Belt Building — that is one of four properties in the City of Gaithersburg on the National Register of Historic Places; the other three are the B&O Train Station and Freight Shed, the Thomas Cannery, and the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory — the last of which is also the only property in the City that is listed as a National Historic Landmark.

• Sebastian Montes writes, April 9 is target date for new day-labor center:
  

  ‘‘We expect Casa to be in services on or near April 9,” said Catherine Matthews, director of the Upcounty Regional Services Center in Germantown, which will monitor the center’s progress.

  A key part of getting the word out has also been to convince the Derwood community that the employment center — two trailers on a half-acre lot — will not be a burden on the nearby community.

  ‘‘We want to prove that … day-laborer centers have good workers and are good neighbors,” Tona Cravioto, head of Casa’s employment program, said last week at a forum hosted by the Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance.

• C. Benjamin Ford and Sebastian Montes write, Police worry about growing distrust among immigrants:
  

  Sister Cathy McConnell of St. Camillus Catholic Church in Silver Spring, who works with immigrants, called the loss of trust in the police ‘‘a very sad turn of events.”

  ‘‘A whole class of people are going to be driven underground and we’re all going to pay,” she said. ‘‘People do crazy things out of fear.”

  While the police department has not changed its policy on ignoring the immigration status of crime victims and witnesses, police did pick up 65 people last year after discovering during routine traffic stops that they were wanted for failing to appear at immigration hearings. The police did not track the number of incidents before last year and have not compiled how many immigration detainers have been served so far this year.

Pamela Constable has an interesting article in today’s Post, concerning a Manassas legal aid clinic for immigrants, both legal and illegal:

The clinic highlighted the intimate, sometimes desperate dilemmas faced by thousands of immigrant families in Manassas and other area communities, whose households often include a confusing mix of legal U.S. residents or citizens, illegal immigrants and others with temporary permits or pending immigration cases.

The article allows not only the acknowledgment that the presence of illegals can cause difficulties for a community (overcrowding in homes and schools, businesses failing “because the competition hires cheaper illegal workers”), and that it is possible to be concerned about the impact of illegals without being opposed to the influx of legal Latino immigrants, but also that some immigration problems cannot be just wished away. All in all, a rather remarkable story for the Post.

Andrea F. Siegel reports:

The verdict was in: A Howard County jury had convicted a 33-year-old Columbia man of second-degree murder and child abuse in the beating death of his toddler stepson.

A day later, however, the jury commissioner heard from Adeyemi Alade, who said he was not a U.S. citizen - a prime reason for disqualification from serving on a jury in Maryland - but inadvertently failed to say so on the juror questionnaire.

Now, nearly three years later, the state’s highest court is being asked whether Alade’s admission is cause to overturn Marcus Dannon Owens’ guilty verdict in a case that points to courts’ reliance on whatever potential jurors write on their forms and raises the question of what a jury of one’s peers consists of.

The case will be argued today before the Court of Appeals.

Read the rest of the article here.

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after the arrest of two dozen day laborers in Baltimore, I mentioned that it had been a year since funding had been approved for a day laborer center in Baltimore. In today’s Baltimore Sun, Kelly Brewington writes about how the arrests seem to have refocused efforts on getting this center started:

The arrest of two dozen men waiting for work in a convenience store parking lot on charges of being illegal immigrants renews the urgency to establish an indoor employment center in Southeast Baltimore, say city officials and advocates.

Because indoor employment centers shield illegal migrants from ICE agents? I don’t get it.

Despite last month’s arrests, a throng of mostly immigrant day laborers continue congregating outside the 7-Eleven at Broadway and Lombard Street, seeking to earn their living each day as part of the area’s thriving underground economy.

But immigrant advocates say the system desperately needs to be changed. They say some workers are exploited by unscrupulous employers who prey on Latino immigrants who have little knowledge of English and of American workplace rights. And some area residents complain that the crowded street corner - where workers can often be found on sidewalks and medians - has become a neighborhood eyesore.

CASA employees say they have spent the better part of a year researching potential sites and reaching out to Southeast Baltimore neighborhood groups, merchants, residents and religious leaders to build support for a center. They say Baltimore has been more welcoming to immigrant workers than other cities and that many community residents in Southeast Baltimore have voiced support for a center.

But last spring, the first site CASA proposed at East Lombard and South Eden streets was rejected by parents at City Springs Elementary School, adjacent to the proposed site.

“I’m not against anyone having a job and feeding their families, everyone has the right to seek employment,” said Sharone Henderson, president of the school’s parent teacher organization and mother of a second-grader. “But not close to the school.”

Henderson said female students have complained about being harassed by men at the 7-Eleven, which is around the corner from the school.

“One of them said something to me, by the way,” said Henderson. “This is a K-8 school. And frankly, these kids see a lot of stuff in the community as it is. They don’t need to see that.”

CASA eventually gave up on that location. Although the new location is also claimed to have supporters in the community,

Dennis Sherman, president of CARE, said he is worried about increased traffic along Fayette Street and a possible decrease in property values in this small residential neighborhood, bounded by Washington, Fayette and McElderry streets and Patterson Park Avenue.

“People are starting to rehab their homes, and their property values are going up,” said Sherman, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. “We don’t think this is going to help.”