Dave vs. The Developers
Does Dave Chappelle *really* hate affordable housing? We're about to find out.
A couple years ago while eating at the delectable Sunrise Cafe in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I looked over to see Dave Chappelle also enjoying some huevos rancheros.
“Wow,” I thought. “There’s Dave Chappelle,” who even then could still be considered one of the funniest men on the planet. I thought that made me officially a resident of Yellow Springs.
That was until I checked Zillow and saw the only houses for sale were roughly half a million dollars.
Chappelle is anything but funny in 2022. I loved his comedy show as much as the next high school student, and I haven’t enjoyed him returning to the limelight only to make a complete ass out of himself by targeting transgender people numerous times in his latest comedic outings.
Bigoted rhetoric wouldn’t be tolerated by Yellow Springs. Plenty of them have signs in their front yards declaring that, “Hate has no home here.”
But such is the goodwill that money can buy when you invest $65 million into an affluent NIMBY community with a lot of fellow community members interested in maintaining the status quo. The Hippies went on to vote for Ronald Reagan, after all.
Chappelle trended on Twitter yesterday when he gave us plebes a glimpse at how the rich and powerful treat politicians behind closed doors when he appeared at a city council meeting to berate his puppets:
Twitter was aflame that Chappelle “killed an affordable housing project in small-town Ohio.” While I suppose that statement is true, there is some much-needed context:
The project mastermind, Oberer Companies, is out of Miamisburg and a massive donor to Donald Trump’s election efforts. The original plan called for $300,000-houses on a 53-acre plot of land.
Oberer used that famous developer trick to make the project seem progressive, where it gifted the city 1.75 of those 53 acres to build a few dozen “affordable housing builds.”
That’s all this ever was—a ruse by the developer to make the deal sound more equitable to its liberal residents. A plan for affordable housing? More like a scheme.
What Oberer didn’t realize is that good liberals instantly become conservative reactionaries the second they think poor people are moving into their pristine neighborhoods.
So, no, Dave Chappelle was not the sole reason behind Yellow Springs trashing a broadly worded plane for a few dozen new units. He was simply a more vocal, richer member of the mob.
But bulldozing poor people in zoning fights is a lot easier than bulldozing people with equally deep pockets, as that same mob discovered when the original plan, sans affordable housing component, moved forward.
From Eileen McClory of daytondailynews.com:
That means the zoning reverts to what was previously approved, with 143 single-family homes on the lot, with the homes starting at about $300,000, according to village documents. The village annexed about 34 acres of the land into the village last summer.
Whenever you insult a rich and powerful man on social media, there are weirder, lesser-known men that always rush to the powerful man’s defense like they’re childhood friends. Chappelle is no different.
“Chappelle isn’t against affordable housing! That’s laughable,” they say. “What Chappelle was actually railing against was the plan to put as bunch of McMansions near his property and fuck up all the chill vibes that Chappelle has brought to this town, which was nothing before him and would be nothing without him.”
If this is about the encroachment of McMansions, rather than worrying about “different kinds of homebuyers” attracted by the word “affordable” as one resident so eloquently put it, then Chappelle will soon be pulling his funds for a comedy club and restaurant “off the table.”
“I’m not bluffing,” Chappelle said.
Indeed, sir. Now go ahead and prove it. We would hate to think you were just another rich asshole doing rich asshole things over a fiefdom you’ve cultivated in a town apparently too small to know better.
THOSE WMDs. Normal girl tries to get date with celebrities… Kansas and California cops used civil forfeiture to stage armored car heists on legal marijuana businesses… Old mail trucks should be converted, not crushed… There is nothing you can do to stop me from raising my own little communists… Can MDMA save a marriage?