Governor Kristi Noem has recognized the unfairness of evicting residents from the former STAR Academy on one month’s notice. After protest from the locals, Governor Noem is extending the tenants of the former youth prison south of Custer four more months to seek alternative lodging:
After hearing from impacted families at the campus, Gov. Kristi Noem agreed that finding housing in the Custer area on short notice is difficult. Gov. Noem’s office said that she is willing to take on some of the liability in order to help the families affected by the eviction. The Department of Corrections will be taking on costs associated with insurance, maintenance, infrastructure, utilities, and grounds and maintenance staff.
Residential leases for families at the STAR Academy campus have been extended to March 1, 2020 [Claudia Contreras, “An Entire Neighborhood Faces Eviction in Custer,” KNBN, updated 2019.10.04].
Eleven families live on the grounds. If they really like living at STAR Academy, this reprieve gives them a chance to lobby their legislators in the 2020 Session and seek some longer-term solution.
I note that the residents are on a month to month lease. Was this a result of the foreclosure or were the leases in place before the foreclosure.
I have not seen any indication of legal action on SLIC-e in regards to the bounced check. Are corporations exempt from criminal penalties in this case?
Is there a person in the GOP that ever thinks of any consequence before acting? “Fire, aim, ready,” seems to be their M.O.
Good for the people living there and a point to NoMa’am for listening and responding.
Are they all faithful wingnut voters that got to Noem, when apparently hundreds of farmers willing to grow hemp couldn’t budge her?
Do you (anyone) ever wonder why businesses don’t move to SD? If the Governor herself and a whole legislature full of bohunks can’t come up with a way to make money from an already paid off group of buildings in the Black Hills, then why would an entrepreneur come to such an unfriendly business climate. My gosh. Is everyone so negative and afraid to be ridiculed for failing that they won’t even begin? Are Republicans so castrated by “small government” they’ve lost their creativity?
OK. Let’s think. How about a state owned assisted living and nursing home? How about an RV park with an indoor maintenance and storage facility? How about a state owned pharmaceutical factory to make and provide no profit meds for seniors? How about a snow machine, snow board and snow ski factory that leases small spaces for individual creators? How about a log cabin kit manufacturing business? How about a buffalo hide and sheep’s wool processing center?
Nah! Sell it for a loss and sweep your ineptitude under the rug, Kristi.
BEST IDEA! – Give it to a consortium of Indian tribespeople. It’s less than a thousandth of what they’re owed for land theft and treaty fraud. And, Indians are the only group consistently creative enough to do something really cool with it that will make South Dakota special.
I say jack their rate, or at least farm it out to a public offering. why should these hangers-oners get to keep their sweet digs at a super subsidized price when the government could offer this to an open bidding and get a lot more money. This reduces your and my taxes.
Think of this like when they buy a hammer for $100. Instead we make them spend $200 to print notices in the paper to buy the cheapest $7.99 hammer and all of us get stuck with a $207.99 bill. In this case, we have some slackards living in government housing for like $400 a month, and if we bid it out we could get $800, $900 a month easy.
It works both ways, folks, and $900 a month buys a lot of $100 hammers. Roughly 9.
Self inflicted stupidity, pulled by the Noem admin. They compounded that stupidity by trying to put the hammer down on these folks with a 30 day eviction notice. And the initial response from the governor’s office was just…..ridiculous. ““the impact on tenants is real but each of them were in month-to-month leases and there are liability issues for the state and its taxpayers when the property reverted back to the state in early September.” (source: Rapid City Journal, Oct 6, 2019)
So, there is no longer the ‘liability’? Oofdah
I’m glad that pressure from the community (and probably others) changed this decision, but……gee Kristi. I know my math isn’t that good, but, getting income from these tenants amounts to more money than having a building sitting empty. Pretty sure.
Sadly, Ms Noem didn’t reverse course on this decision because it was right, wrong, or indifferent. She reversed course because it was a political black eye. But, I’m still glad that the initial decision was changed.
Porter—another Pe’ Sla, right outside of Custer? What an interesting suggestion… a kickstart to a renewed statewide drive for Reconciliation… and the property is right by the Mickelson Trail, named for the last man to do any explicit reconciliation push.
Perhaps out Lakota neighbors could open the site to all tribes and use it as a training center for Native activism.
If there’s any place that probably needs a spiritual healing, it’s got to be a kids prison. Imagine how many Indian kids got beat and sexually abused in there. The karma’s got to be dark as soot.
Porter, you know I don’t go in for spiritual anything… but would our Lakota neighbors consider it useful and feasible to reclaim that space from the bad karma you can feel there (and which I can at least appreciate on a literary and historic level)?
I like Porter’s ideas. Let’s ask the tribes what they’d like to do with the site.
If this was happening in CO I know exactly what would be done. The site would be torn down, trucked away, and returned to nature. It happens here, all the time. The Rockies are national forest land and all leases have a leave it like you found it clause. (Even old ski areas.) Do The Black Hills have such a provision?
Excellent idea, Porter.
Thanks, Dana P – If I ever have ideas to help South Dakota, I run them through the “grudznick filter”. If grudznick hates the idea with a passion, then I know I’m on the right path.
Maybe demolishing the buildings instead of repurposing them would be better for the site karma. Train activists on a clean slate, amidst more restored natural beauty.
Maybe Greta Thunberg will like the Black Hills and Pine Ridge so much that she’ll want to return here and found an institute!