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Teens call it "Marghetto"
• How leaders of tomorrow perceive the city
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Sunday,
March 7, 2010
My jaw dropped when a Margate teenager within earshot referred to Margate as “Marghetto.” I had to ask why and the high-school-age girl responded with “because it’s like a ghetto. That’s why we call it that.”
As it turns out, more of these ‘leaders of tomorrow’ lack a positive image of Margate, which could pose a detriment to the way people perceive the city for generations to come.
Taking with a grain of salt what these teenagers had to say, their perceptions reflect a glimmer of truth.
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In December 1995, Margate city officials announced their plans to form a Community Redevelopment Agency to oversee public redevelopment in the city.
Despite concerns over officially labeling CRA neighborhoods as “blighted,” which city officials said might negatively impact the morale of residents living in those areas, the city said it would do what it needed to qualify for federal and state assistance.
The city did what it said it needed to do. Margate Commissioners officially declared Margate “blighted” in order to achieve a certain level of government funding.
Since, Margate has been receiving state and federal housing awards in the form of Neighborhood Stabilization Programs, Community Development Block Grants, State Housing Initiative Programs and various Disaster Relief Initiatives which, over time, have attracted and grown a low-income element in the city, say residents.
Margate resident and former city commission candidate, Rich Popovic, has asked city officials numerous times to consider halting grant programs aimed at attracting the disenfranchised to Margate. He says it’s ruining the city.
Franklin Roosevelt declared to Congress in 1935, “The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief . . . . Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration, fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”
Might this apply to cities too?
Reader Opinion
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According to the U.S. Census, Margate has shed four percent of its population since the turn of the century.
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