This week, I was made aware of a crackpot proposal currently floating around City Hall that would actually pay educated people to move into Niagara Falls neighborhoods like the one I actually paid to move into.

The idea appears to have originated with new Community Development Director Seth Piccirillo, and fell into my hands in the form of a memo he wrote to City Council Chairman Sam Fruscione on June 4.

“College Graduate Incentive Program,” the memo is headlined.

The city’s Community Development Department is proposing spending $200,000 of the federal grant money it receives to subsidize college graduates to the tune of $3,492 a year for two years just to live in neighborhoods most sane people wouldn’t live in if you paid them!

The memo calls this the “High Level Solution.”

“Ultimately, it would be an investment in this desired target market and an opportunity to compete for these individuals to stay in Niagara Falls for an extended period of time,” the memo states.

“Also, clustering a dense group of talent fosters entrepreneurial and economic opportunities and growth.”

In other words, the city is proposing to pay college educated people a total of $6,984 to live here for two years. The Redhead and I lived in a similar neighborhood for 14 years and we have two advanced and one undergraduate degree between us, yet we never got a dime.

The truly ironic thing is that, in reality, they’ve been paying people to live in these neighborhoods all along and it hasn’t really worked out too well for them.

Ever see what happens to a neighborhood once a couple of landlords become convinced that accepting Section 8 Housing is worthwhile? That’s where the government – and not the tenant – actually pays the rent. It’s a good deal for some landlords. They know they’ll get their check on the first of the month come hell or high water.

But it’s a bad deal for others living in the neighborhood. The police will tell you they start seeing an uptick in burglaries. Street level drug dealing and prostitution become common. Before long, as the Section 8 properties begin their inevitable deterioration – What’s the motivation to keep up a house you don’t own and aren’t paying to live in? – neighboring property values begin to decline.

Longtime residents decide to cut their losses and run before it gets any worse. Section 8 landlords buy up the empty houses and start renting them to indigent and often criminal tenants.

And once nice neighborhoods, like those throughout Niagara Falls, become unfit for civilized human habitation.

That’s what happens when well-meaning do-gooders are given the opportunity to spend our money on their silly experiments in social engineering. Government officials come and go, but crime ridden slums full of generational welfare recipients are forever.

And don’t forget, this is Niagara Falls. How many lazy but educated sons and daughters of local politicians, campaign donors and political gadflies do you think will be given first dibs on these grants?

Seven grand is seven grand, after all, and political payback in this town is what it always has been.

There is absolutely no obligation to stay any longer than the two years the money is being handed out, and not even an obligation to actually invest anything here, aside from monthly rent.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity for recent grads looking to kick back and postpone serious life decisions or to live for almost nothing while the raft of resumes they’ve sent out to other, more prosperous parts of the country are processed.

$3,492 a year comes to $291 a month and Niagara Falls is full of apartments costing $350 a month. A young slacker working 20 hours a week in a restaurant could live quite comfortably with such a subsidy.

And who will the landlords of this “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” generation be?

Will prospective tenants be steered toward the many rental properties owned by various City Council members, county Legislators and others whose life’s work is sucking at the government teat?