Who Put the Oxy in Moron?
Popular affordable housing options in Sedona
I’m not a betting woman, but I’d haul out my two cents, slap them down, and wager that Hollywood is not considering Sedona for its next reality show any time soon. Just when I think that maybe there is normality in La La Land, I encounter something that reaffirms my belief that Sedona is a holding tank for absurdity.
I recently spotted a channeling advertisement on a store bulletin board that confirmed my view. Of course, I had to read it. You never know where comedy lurks! According to this notice, Bible characters, Native American gods, and Elvis would make an appearance during an “out of this world” channeling. I know, I know, making a reality statement about Sedona is like pointing out a wart on a nose; it is self-evident that reality and Sedona in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
When it comes to reality challenges it seems that everyone gets into the act; the chanting crowd isn’t the only group that holds a patent. Government is another Petri dish of ludicrous ideas; who else funds a study on cow flatulence? With death and taxes you can count on bureaucrats, including our own in Sedona, to put the oxy in moron.
Speaking of morons and reality challenges, which one came up with the brilliant idea that Sedona needs yet another committee to study another unsolvable problem, affordable housing? Our first Vice Mayor called Cottonwood and Camp Verde Sedona’s affordable housing. I have to admit, I was gleeful anticipating potential comic material when I heard an earnest speaker expound on this topic at a community meeting. After I sheepishly picked myself off the floor, trying valiantly to regain my dignity and trying unsuccessfully to stop laughing at the absurdity of this housing notion, I quickly realized that this was another Excentric moment calling for a column. “Get a lemon and a Tom Collins is not far behind” is my motto!
The speaker, who I suspect was battling his own lucidity demons, went on about organizing community groups and wealthy benefactors to study the issue and make recommendations to the town council. Don’t you just hate it when the rich get a conscience? It usually ends up with useless, feel-good groups who have no clue as to how the rest of us live, making ridiculous suggestions as to what is best for the hoi polloi and organizing charrettes to study those ideas. Aren’t there enough golf courses in the area to keep these people occupied? Although, when they organize, there’s a ton of free food. I’ll admit a free lunch and comedy are nothing to scoff at.
Anyway, the speaker belabored the point that it would take a community effort to buy land for affordable housing. It’s going to take more than a community effort to find, let alone pay for, the land to build affordable housing in Sedona. You better think big, water into wine big or, at the very least, an Enron-type scheme to pull off this nonsensical idea.
I and all of my neighbors are just itching to sell our multi-million dollar properties dirt cheap for a tax write off. Calling all local clairvoyants. Where, other than in Sedona, do people, who experience putting the garbage out as transformational, think that we can build affordable housing with land at a premium? Who in their right mind (not many come to think about it) believes that anyone with more than one acre would sell the property at a reduced rate just because some group recommends that we need housing for all socio-economic groups? I mean, as my friend Peter is fond of saying, do fat babies belch? It is pretty evident that this idea is cockamamie at best. Let me put it another way, you have a greater chance of seeing the Pope at Hooters than of getting affordable housing here.
So, the committee will study the issue until the red rocks erode and finally recommend impossible solutions to correct the inequity rather than be politically incorrect and flat out admit that some will be lucky enough to live here and the rest will be on the outskirts of town. Really, what is it about premiere retirement community and its exclusiveness that people don’t understand? I’d like to have lobster, but my budget is bologna and there is no use standing by the tank coveting creatures that would grow old and die of natural causes before I could afford to make them my daily fare. It is basic supply and demand–pretty simple to understand.
When the committee approaches me to sell my estate, I’ll point them to my lawyer, Perry Mason, as soon as Madame Gigi makes celestial contact. Of course, he’ll have to wait his turn; I hear that she plans to call up Roger Miller, “Trailer for sale or rent, Rooms to let…fifty cents.”
