Because this is the internet, make sure you read the footnote at the bottom.

In Ohio, nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame wanted to build a transitional shelter which would house eight to ten women in Munson Township, Ohio. You’ll never guess what happened next! (akshually you will; boldface mine)

…the Sisters were thrown a curveball: many in Munson Township viewed the shelter as an incoming wave of societal degradation. The petition for a variance was delayed, the board decided, until this June.

“People in Munson and the surrounding areas pay BIG MONEY to keep their kids and families away from the dredges of society,” Munson resident Richard Spanish posted on Facebook. “And the Sisters of Notre Dame think it’s a good idea to fill an old barn with homeless, most likely drug-addicted hags???!!”

“You do not want the inner city coming to our county,” Sam Culper posted. “This will be like a cancer.”

… When they got time to share their own thoughts, the townsfolk present seemed to forget about Mira’s story completely, focusing more so on the fact that, for what seemed like a majority of respondents, that the shelter would be down the road—and a little too close to home.

“This is our children. This is our streets! This is my family, this is my husband,” a Munson resident in her mid-forties cried out. “Right now, I am by myself raising two children. I’m going to probably be putting a target on my back.”…

“No!” one woman cried. “It brings crime from the inner city!”

As the town hall came to a head, many in its audience seemed to rally around a common fear: We’ve been here, in our homes, for decades—and we don’t plan on giving that up, or allowing our homes’ values to depreciate. “We are here to live a peaceful and quiet life,” one woman in her fifties shouted.

“What about the safety of the students, like 800 to 1,000 feet away from the shelter,” one woman said. “When you have residents leaving the facility! Those who have access to weapons. They have access to drugs.”

… “Yeah, but you’re talking about the residents being homeless—drug problems, mental health problems. And we all know all the school shootings usually revolve around mental health.”

I’m getting tired of economically productive cities being forced to solve a disproportionate amount of society’s problems. It’s not cities that lead to concentrations of poverty and its attendant public health and social issues, it’s the suburbs making it impossible for people who need a lot of assistance to survive there, so they stay in urban areas. Their lack of shamelessness goes so far that they’re willing to admit they’re doing it for money (preventing property value depreciation).

Freeloaders.

*For the young’uns, phrases like “dysfunctional urban culture” were the rage from the 1980s to the aughts, both among conservatives and the Serious Democratic set. The urban poor, who were poor because of bad values, were freeloading off of the productive (i.e., White) members of society. As bad as things are now, it was really racist back then.