Any one who read my old blog knows that I have a terrible man-crush on Jim Schutze, a man I have never met. That's because Jim is the best columnist in town, and one of the best I've read anywhere. I generally hold him up to our staff as the Platonic ideal for which they should strive -- peerless reporting, lots of research, clever conversational writing, and a clear (but fair) point of view.

It's rare that a Schutze column makes me mad -- at him. But this week, for the second time, he went after my beloved Ferguson Road Initiative.

Now I'm not saying that my pique is entirely justified -- I'm hardly an objective observer. FRI (which sounds to me more like an exiled political party than a "Sovietique" one) has worked tirelessly to clean up crime in my neighborhood. The lack of coverage of its activities was a major inspiration for the Pegasus News hyperlocal business plan. It is the only organization that our company has ever supported with cash (albeit a small amount-- as a minor sponsor of a community-naming celebration).

However, I encourage you to read my take on FRI before you completely swallow Schutze's David-and-Goliath parable.

A good place to start is my first experience with the group.

Want more? Here's an account of a meeting I attended to make sure the first wasn't a fluke.

Schutze's article paints FRI (along with The Enclave at White Rock development) as the Simon Legree trying to remove the plucky old Ash Creek Mobile Home Community, portraying the trailer park's stay of execution as a sort of heartwarming Capra revival. (There were actually thirteen organizations involved.)

Jim's argument, as I understand it, goes like this, and my response to each point follows:

People who have lived in a nonconforming but grandfathered trailer park for decades shouldn't be forced to move just because the neighborhood has gotten all uppity.

That's a populist sentiment that I can buy into. BUT, how many of the residents are in that boat? Most of the people I've seen down there don't look like they've been alive that long. I live in this neighborhood. And the one time I found myself on a bike with a flat tire down by Ash Creek, it wasn't old grannies who were circling me like vultures.

(To be fair, there is some dispute over the validity of the code violations, as noted in this blog post by AC resident Marty Ray-- a post largely contradicted by her comments in Schutze's earlier story.)

Sure, the absentee trailer park owner has let the place go to pot. But because he's well-meaning and ineffectual rather than money grubbing, we should cut him a break, if not give him a medal.

I see that one way of looking at the owner is that he is noble for keeping the place alive when he could easily sell it. Another way of looking at it is that he ain't too bright. And why should those of us who live around the park have to pay the price for that? Schutze admires the lickin' that the owner took to see the vote through. I say he deserved it. And that when you actually live in the neighborhood, benign negligence and malicious lawbreaking look pretty much the same.

The "proto-fascist" organization that Schutze has cast as Old Man Potter in this drama spearheads a federally funded "Weed and Seed" program that has done wonders for curtailing crime in the greater neighborhood, and is starting to work on my little corner. I'm glad of that, because on an afternoon walk, my family has been nearly run down by a car thief on the lam. I hear gunshots several times a week. Prostitutes roam the area, and they ain't the cutesy Julia Roberts type.

No grocery store can manage to stay in business around us, and other than Walgreens, the best businesses around me are chop shops and dollar stores. Do we need a bunch of McMansions to solve that problem? No. But dilapidated, neglected, code-violating trailer parks don't attract businesses, even the basic ones that make a neighborhood livable.

And when their elderly long-time residents move on, I don't believe they tend to fill up with the hard-working salt-of-the-earth sort who become neighborhood citizens. I don't have any demographic data to back that up, but neither does Schutze (at least in this article).

I do know this: Ash Creek is in the highest-crime reporting area in our 'hood and has a third more reported crime than the surrounding reporting areas. Does that prove that the park is bad? No -- no more than Schutze convinces that it is good.

Schutze looked deeper into the crime in an earlier, more Dickensian article: "I looked at the 911 calls. Many appear to have been made by residents of the park asking the police to do something about people outside the park firing guns in the creek bottom at night and setting off firecrackers.

My experience with criminal background checks is this: If the trailer park people could afford to do comprehensive background checks on everybody in the 13 complaining neighborhood groups, I'm sure they would come up with an impressive number of drunk-driving arrests, hot checks, nonsupport warrants, peace bonds and at least a couple of registered sex offenders. What separates the mortgaged middle class from the unmortgaged trailer park class is a filamentous line, which, of course, is what makes the puffed-up houses so nervous all the time. "

Um, generalize much?

Do my safety and property concerns mean that I want to see people railroaded out of the hood? No. But I've not seen the residents or owner of the trailer park taking the slightest bit of initiative to become part of the solution. I've been to no less than four public meetings where this trailer park and its frequent and flagrant code violations were on the agenda. Not once has anyone from that community spoken up. (On that basis, I'm making the assumption that they didn't attend.)

I don't have any particular sympathy for Enclave residents who don't like the view. But to paint this as a gentrification battle affecting only high-dollar homeowners is a gross oversimplification. Houses on my street are worth around $140k, unless you listen to the Dallas County Appraisal District (but that's a different rant).

Just 'cos someone is a sentimental old fool doesn't mean that the rest of the neighborhood should suffer. Or that a great reporter should let his populist streak get the better of his usually-impeccable bullshit detector.

As the title of this post indicates, I doubt that the trailer park is really as bad as I think it is. Nor do I think it is as benign as Schutze paints it -- not by a long shot (its Citysearch "Best of" notwithstanding). It's a complex issue -- one on which I as a neighborhood resident am conflicted. It's not a case of a moneygrubbing slumlord harboring a hive of crackheads. Nor is it a case of isolated spoiled wealthy interlopers trying to improve their view. But it is definitely a story that deserves a more careful telling.