Over the past couple of decades thousands of other condominium units have been built in the Lancaster region for specific segments of the housing market: Senior Communities, Student housing, Senior housing, Assisted Living, recently downtown condominiums, plus newly built conventional rental apartments that are more spacious, a better appointed, often have garages, and are marketed to prospects with incomes in the top 10% nationally.

At 5.04%, Lancaster residential rental vacancy rate in 2013 is at the highest point since 2005, the beginning of our reporting for this series.

1) There must be at least 250 and likely as many as 400 relatively attractive garden apartments units vacant in the greater Lancaster area at all times. If the federal government funded and state administered Section 8 rental program allowed the tenant to supplement the government grant so that rental payments were closer to market rates, landlords would be motivated to quickly make vacant apartments available to hundreds of deserving families.

According to a column in the Pittsburgh Tribune “By 2-to-1 margin, Pennsylvanians with opinion say AG Kane should resign”

The idea that we can afford to provide new housing for the disadvantage is as economically preposterous as giving new cars to the poor.

A major national effort to desalinate Mediterranean seawater and to recycle wastewater has provided the country with enough water for all its needs, even during severe droughts. More than 50 percent of the water for Israeli households, agriculture and industry is now artificially produced…

So with the fate of Lancaster Square East apparently determined in the back rooms, there would seem to be only one other prime location possibly on the horizon downtown for newly built, prime office space and residential condominiums.

But all too often, and especially recently, they have been sent to their deaths for foolish wars urged by ignorant leaders (read that ‘damn fools’), those who see every foreign problem as a nail and the blood of youth as a hammer, and at the urging and conniving of the military / industrial complex as we were warned against by President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Last Sunday the New York Times published a major opinion piece by Sam Quinones entitled “Serving All Your Heroin Needs” which did not necessarily contradict what we had been contending but gave reason to revisit and further research our contentions.

“Over the years I did battle with conservatives; I once told the religious right to ‘get out of my face.’ That went over well. The irony is that in my dotage, with three kids, I got more conservative.”