LETTERS

LETTERS
March 2006

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800 MORE VICTIMS

As one of about 800 Lakeview residents, I want to tell you that the day the Sacramento diocese put this park on the auction block was a sad one for us. [See "Unfair or Very Generous?," October 2005 Faith.]

More than 75 percent of our residents are over 70 years old. These folks have been retired for as many as 30 years. They don't have the benefits of 401(k) plans, decent pensions, or substantial Social Security payments. Their medical expenses are not covered by employer-sponsored insurance; Medicare seeks more and more in the way of premiums, and senior health care plans are able to offer less, despite the new drug plan. Among eight or ten houses nearest me, I know for sure that three widows have incomes of 12 to 15 thousand dollars a year. I have no knowledge of others.

Bessire and Casenhiser and Abraham Keh have offered to "help" one low-income resident that I know of, and that only after Mr. Bessire attended a city of Citrus Heights meeting where the elderly woman stepped to the microphone to say she simply can't afford the increased rent. There seems to have been no general announcement of their plan, which consists of a "reverse mortgage" which they will carry, so other elderly folks are left to worry how they will manage, because homes are not selling in Lakeview, so they can't get out. Many who moved from here in the past went to assisted living facilities and needed the money from their homes to pay the high monthly fees ($2500 to $5000).

The quote from your paragraph here quoted neglects to say that if we had bought the park ourselves, the $200 monthly increase would have accrued to us homeowners and enhanced the value of our properties instead of devaluing our primary asset: "The investment company, however, says it is willing to work with residents on a fixed income and that it wouldn't raise rents anywhere as high as they have been raised if the residents themselves had bought the park. Residents admitted that space rents would rise by at least $200 a month if they had bought the park."

I fear the Sacramento diocese is not highly respected in our park any more. The feeling is they gave us such short notice we scarcely had time to evaluate the situation unemotionally. Your publication doesn't know the whole story and probably doesn't care about this elder abusive situation or the diocese's reputation.

The church's handling of the priestly sexual abuse in a timely fashion has resulted in more than 800 more victims.

Jean Edwards,
Citrus Heights

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