Current Debates

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2311179/6_yearold_evicted_a_big_bad_controversy.html?cat=9

Thoughts? What should be done in the situation?

I think that is horrible. I understand that those 55+ communities have strict rules about things like this, but it's not like they are insisting they should be able to stay forever. They just want to keep their granddaughter with them while they are trying to sell their house so they can move. I think it sounds horrible that they want to take her away from the only parents she has ever known and put her into a foster home until they sell their house. I hope the judge that votes on this case tells them that this is a situation in which the rules need to be bent.

I could understand evicting them all if they were insisting that they were going to stay their, but they are trying to move and have cut the price of their house already. I hope she gets to stay with her grandparents and someone buys that house soon.

My grandmother refuses to move into a 55+ community just because of their rules against having children over because she loves having her great-grandchildren with her as much as possible.

Thank you katka83 for my beautiful siggy!                                                                                                                                                                                           

So a well loved 6 y/o is supposed to go to foster care - in FL, a state that has been in the news repeatedly for it's flawed, poorly monitored foster care system in the past few years - because some very self-centered senior citizens (or near-seniors) have no compassion?  Even when foster care is well done, it's NOT family care, and a child can suffer emotional damage for a very long time as a result of being ripped away from a loving parental figure and being thrust into a strangers home, with nobody familiar around... and who's to say she's not going to be abused or molested while in this foster home?  Not necessarily by the foster parents, but there are some very disturbed, damaged children living in foster care, and most foster homes have more than one foster child living there.

I'm not too far away from being able to live in a 55+ community, and I'll have to say, I don't know too many people in my age group who would be so heartless, but then most of us prefer the company to young people with a zest for life than a bunch of rocking chair, bingo babes.  Hopefully grandma will be able to sell her home very, very quickly and she can kiss these folks goodbye.

<<My grandmother refuses to move into a 55+ community just because of their rules against having children over because she loves having her great-grandchildren with her as much as possible.>>

This is off-topic but if you grandmother was interested, she could look for places like where my mom and step-dad lived.  It was a retirement community for the most part, but they only had a requirement that at least 80% of the residents be 55+.  The other 20% could be any age and, therefore, children were allowed.  While they lived there, my mom would watch my kids for me while I was at work.  They even once in a while took our kids overnight to give DH and I a little mini-vacation.  There was never a problem.  In fact, every evening when I picked up my kids from their place, there would be a whole bunch of the older ladies sitting in the entryway chatting.  Their faces would just light up when they saw my kids and they loved asking older DS about his day and cooing at younger DS (who was a baby at the time).  It made their day.

It kind of seems like the best of both worlds, retirement community without the strict rules about children.

I don't see why the retirement community can't work with the couple on a compromise.  Obviously the couple is willing to move, they just need some time to try to sell their house and figure out what they are going to do.  What is it going to hurt the retirement community to just give them a little extra time?

Also, isn't it better to keep the girl out of foster care at all reasonable costs?  Not only for the sake of the girl, but also because then she would be taking up a foster care spot that is probably more desperately needed by some other child who really does not have anyone.