Gatherings Grove “project” — more questions than answers
To the editor:
Where do I begin?
The incredible explanation for “the need for simple and temporary housing” on the 25-acre property purchased by The Community in Fort Myers LLC, an affiliate of Twelve Tribes Communities, formed in June of 2015 should be questioned by every Pine Island resident.
The “Mango Farm,” or the 1,300 trees on the farm, are now privately owned and like every other farm on Pine Island, there is a seasonality for the businesses that require more workers at certain times of the year and fewer workers at other times of the year. We’ve had much larger, and many types of farms on Pine Island throughout its history and amazingly, all of them have been able to acquire the labor they have needed without using Lee County’s “special exceptions” provision for “simple and temporary housing.”
Nehemiah James, a spokesman for the group, said that the proposed housing “wouldn’t be used by immigrant laborers but by ‘friends and family members’ of the group.”
We need to ask ourselves who are these “friends and family members” of the group? Where will the laborers, the alleged rationale for creating the housing, be living? If the dwellings only have bedrooms and bathrooms why will they be housing only friends and family members and not housing the alleged “temporary workers?”
Please research the “Twelve Tribes Communities.” See for yourself what information is available.
There are many more questions that need to be asked and the answers, so far, to the few that have been asked just don’t make sense.
Max Christian
St. James City