One voice that has been painfully squelched in the community debate about the costs and benefits of the Karluk Manor project to house 48 chronic inebriate, chronic homeless citizens of Anchorage is the voice of the Fairview community -- the residents, not the people who are paid to advocate for their nonprofit business. With the exception of the Municipality of Anchorage's Planning Department, nobody has heard us.

Supporters of the Karluk Manor project have effectively framed members of the neighborhood as ignorant, uncaring, and even responsible for the deaths of any more homeless people should the project fail. They point to the "No Red Nose Inn" signs and that is the end of the debate. Open season on Fairview residents. The most eloquent and outspoken individual levying the charges that Fairview residents are ignorant, uncaring, and worse is Jeff Jessee, CEO of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority (the Trust).

Here is the shorthand: Discredit your opponents by painting them as unethical, immoral, and worse. That is a pretty shady tactic! If the residents of Fairview were to use this tactic, the debate might look like this:

Imagine this political cartoon:

Two people sit around a table with bags of money labeled HUD. They are smoking cigars in room labled Housing and Neighborhood Development Commission. One person is standing with a proposal in her hand. She is labeled "RurAL CAP." The other person, labeled "Cook Inlet Housing Authority" hands the bags of HUD money to a man labeled "Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority (the Trust). The man labeled "the Trust" then hands the HUD money to the same woman labeled "RurAL CAP" now standing on the other side of the Trust.

This is exactly how things appear to operate in the Housing And Neighborhood Development Commission. Conflicted members appear to be directing federal funds to their employers (and thus themselves) from key public seats in this and other municipal commissions. The tools of power are granted to the citizens of Anchorage. Public seats on the HAND Commission are meant for natural people, not corporate people. (To the uninitiated, that is a reference to Citizens United.)

Can you see the appearance of impropriety? I do.

If the opponents of the Karluk Manor project were to use the same tactics as the supporters, perhaps the media would be telling that story.

While I have witnessed what appears to be the abuse of office, let me be clear: I believe every player in this is working for the good of the community in good faith, although possibly with bad judgment. Kind of like the well-intentioned people who printed those awful "Red Nose Inn" signs.

I will dispatch any notion that the Fairview Community Council supports or endorses the "Red Nose" signs. It is simply not the case. These signs harm, not help, Fairview's honest and well-promulgated opposition to Karluk Manor.

I will say the individuals responsible for making those signs have experienced extraordinary and enduring hardship from the overwhelming weight of the homeless community concentrated in Fairview. Examples include having Community Service Patrol on speed dial, shepherding extremely sick individuals to available services yourself because CSP just doesn't show up, scooping human excrement from personal doorways, and shielding children's' eyes from people defecating right on the road next to a service provider with a bathroom.

Each new nonprofit promises to do a great job. Each nonprofit misses the mark.

It's getting worse year after year, with no end in sight. Promises made. Promises broken. The nonprofit community's answer: MORE HOMELESS SERVICES IN FAIRVIEW. At any cost.

This is a threat to people's lives and livelihoods. Any compassionate person should understand how someone's emotions could cause them to act less than civilly under these conditions. Now that we have dispensed with the spin and bias from both sides, let us consider the facts.

No better argument can be made against supporting the conditional use permit request than the Staff Report prepared by the professional planners at the Municipal Planning Department. It largely recognizes the concerns of local businesses and neighbors.

The Planning Department report (Planning and Zoning 2010-077) states that: