The city of Greensboro wants to know if you like where you live.

Actually, if you do like where you live Greensboro doesn’t want to hear from you, but if you don’t then the city is conducting a survey to find out all about it.

It’s certainly a different kind of survey.

The press release states, “When you go home every day, do you feel good about where you live and what type of dwelling you live in?  If not, the City’s Neighborhood Development Department would like to hear from you.”

Judging from the people who have been coming to Zoning Commission and Greensboro City Council meetings for the past 25 years, the vast majority of the people in Greensboro love where they live, their neighborhoods and their neighbors, or at least most of their neighbors.  Not based on a survey, but based on public statements the prime motivation for opposing rezoning requests is that people like their neighborhoods the way they are and don’t want even relatively small changes made to them. Recently a neighborhood was up in arms over the rezoning of 0.1 of an acre that would remain a buffer regardless of the zoning.

Earlier this month, a homeless man speaking before the City Council said he lived in a tent because he liked living in a tent.   And because he likes where he lives, the city doesn’t want to hear from him about his housing needs, although many people would think that he needs better housing.

However, if you hate where you live and would rather live anywhere else, the city would like for you to go this site http://bit.ly/gborosurvey and complete the survey.

The survey claims to focus on the theme “Are you living where you want to live?”  But since people who are living where they want to live are eliminated from the survey, what it actually focuses on is  – Why aren’t you living where you want to live?

The survey will be, according to the press release, used to determine what the barriers are to fair housing in Greensboro and what can be done to overcome them, but the survey itself seems to lend itself to a very one-sided outcome.

The results of the survey are going to be used to establish community goals and determine how much money to spend on fair housing.  It will also be used to draft an Assessment of Fair Housing and a Consolidated Plan.

No doubt the results of the survey that is only of people who don’t like where they live, will show that most people in Greensboro don’t like where they live and there are barriers to fair housing that require a lot of money to fix.

There is also a public meeting for people who don’t like where they live on Thursday, Aug. 1 from 6 to 6:30 p.m. at the Greensboro Public Library at 219 N. Church St.

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