We don't like to talk about social class in Tampa - it would be very un-American for America's next great city - but of course it exists. Nowhere is it more challenged than in the Civitas plan to have the rich - or at least people who can pay $600,000 for a condo - live cheek to jowl with the poor in a neighborhood that is now the Central Park Village public housing development. At least one of the very rich thinks it will fly.
Multimillionaire RV king Don Wallace, a chief investor in Civitas, was quoted in another newspaper last week saying how much he appreciates the diversity in his neighborhood now.
"You find million-dollar homes and homes that aren't worth $100,000. You don't care about who lives next door to you," he was quoted as saying.
Of course who lives next door to him is someone named Ferman, in a $2-million mansion.
I imagine any Ferman is a pretty decent neighbor, cutting the grass before it's knee-high, parking in the garage instead of the front yard. Not that it matters, as Wallace's $8.5-million property is so huge, he isn't anywhere near his next-door neighbor. But no matter, because the real diversity he's referring to comes in the neighborhood behind him.
Hyde Park.
The three houses behind Don on Richardson Place are, in the eyes of the property appraiser, valued from $262,000 to $317,000. Not exactly shabby, and even those prices are pretty low ball, I'd say, after driving down the charming bungalow street a short block off Bayshore. I didn't see any house anywhere around there in the less than $100,000 category, but if there is one, I'd appreciate Don giving me a call. I've got my mortgage broker on hold.
Now here's diversity for you.
Don moved from Harbour Island, he said, because he didn't like living in a gated community. Of course he doesn't have any need to live in a gated community. He has his own private security detail.
So, egalitarian is as egalitarian does.
If rich people want to live with poor people, why aren't they doing it now?
Apparently rich people don't realize they're allowed to live in the city's poorer neighborhoods, because they're all clustered in the rich ones like Bayshore, Palma Ceia, Culbreath Isles, Harbour Island, Avila and Cheval. They must not be aware houses and lots are available all over Tampa Heights and West and East Tampa, neighborhoods with diversity up the gazoo.
Diversity has become a buzzword for something urban, something we think we want: the energizing effect of living among people who are different from us. But we're thinking different means artists, Web designers, hip 25-year-olds, black professionals. We're not thinking about people who are poor. Poor means a lot of things rich people wouldn't like at all, and that poor people don't like either.
I'm not so sure poor people are as crazy about diversity as rich people. On WMNF-FM 88.5 last week, a caller warned that breaking up public housing is a government plot to disperse the poor and dilute the little political and economic power they have now. And on a WMNF Sunday morning show aired before the Civitas vote, Connie Burton and other Central Park Village residents were dead set against Civitas. We're talking their home, for one thing.
On the other hand, Don Wallace found a group of supporters in Central Park who liked what Civitas offered. Maybe they can see the end result more clearly. Maybe they believe they will be included in it. Maybe they're optimistic. Maybe they're right.
At any rate, they're all still poor. They all want better housing. The situation is the same as it ever was.
Don Wallace's LazyDays RV did $750-million in business last year. He could be sailing the Caribbean, living in a palazzo in Venice, buying an NFL team. Instead he wants to build housing for poor people.
Forget the $600,000 condos next door, and he could just make it happen.
- Sandra Thompson, a Tampa writer, can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.
