Patten TowersDisaster at home invisible?
What does it say about our town that the handicapped and desperately poor residents of Patten Towers had to spend almost a week on cots and the Red Cross and Salvation Army groups still caring for them can’t rally donations to help feed and clothe them?
The residents finally are in hotels, but the disaster assistance agencies helping them are breaking their budgets — spending more than $80,000 since a fire nearly two weeks ago left 241 people essentially homeless.
When Hurricane Katrina brought flood refugees to Chattanooga, this community opened its arms and wallets.
But now, our own are without, and we are motionless. Perhaps we all think Patten Towers’ owner, PK Management, will step up? Looks like we’d best think again. A promised endowment from PK hasn’t materialized, and donations have failed to keep pace with the cost.
These Patten Tower residents are elderly and infirm people who lost their apartments because a grossly mismanaged, rent-subsidized Section 8 building — a once stately and historic hotel — was allowed to be patched together with bubble gum and masking tape.