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The Blind Side

No one likes being taken by surprise - especially when it concerns their kids, their jobs and their community.

TIGEST TESSEMA, Jane Anderson, Jihan Pauling and Karen Orrick do not know each other. But they have something miserable in common: The rug was yanked out from under them.

It was yanked in a way that could've been avoided.

Make that "should've," because you can't tell me that the people who dumped them didn't know the harm they'd cause.

They just didn't care.

Tessema owns Paradise, a mall kiosk in The Gallery that sells scarves and organic soaps, oils and lotions. For 16 years, she faithfully paid a healthy rent ($1,800 per month in 2014) for the privilege of being in the thick of passers-by in the mall's east end.

In November, vendors were told that the mall was to be remodeled. They'd need to vacate by Jan. 31.

Which was shock enough. But the insult? They'd already paid thousands in extra rent for the privilege of doing business in the mall during the holiday months.

For Tessema, that equaled an extra $9,000, paid in monthly installments of $1,500 per month, since July.

"If I'd known they were going to close, I could've kept that money to start up somewhere else," says Tessema, who does not know how she'll earn a living come Feb. 1.

"I made very little money" during the holidays, because The Gallery - owned by local PREIT - barely even decorated for the season, let alone marketed the mall.

You can't me tell me that PREIT didn't plan in July to wind down operations through December. Not informing the vendors was a shameless money grab.

Greedy pigs.

Then there's FunKids, a 24-year-old daycare center at 401 Market St., whose families learned on Dec. 22 that - ho-ho-ho! - the center had lost its lease. FunKids would close on Jan. 31.

"We were in a panic," says Jane Anderson, parent of two toddlers, about how FunKids' 90 families felt about finding new child-care on such short notice. Especially during the holidays, when many had out-of-town plans and were unable to search for new daycare.

Andrew Cohen, regional director of Knowledge Universe, owner of FunKids, says the lease loss took the company (and FunKids' 25 employees) by surprise, too.

"We'd been in negotiations" with OakTree Capital Management, owner of 401 Market St., for about a year, says Cohen. "But we never expected to be out of there so soon."

OakTree (whose representative did not return a call for comment) was coaxed into extending the FunKids lease by a month, but that OakTree needed coaxing at all is arrogant.

Thoughtless prigs.

And don't get me started on how little regard there has been for families whose kids were enrolled in the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter Schools. The school gave elementary-school parents just five days' notice that it would shutter on Dec. 31. This came on the heels of the October closing of the charter's secondary school.

Palmer's 1,250 students fell victim to administrative incompetence, dismal test scores and massive debt.

"It's unfair to receive notification over the weekend that the school will be closed," Palmer parent Jihan Pauling told the Inquirer last month.

That's putting it kindly.

School District spokesman Fernando Gallard says that 780 former Palmer students are now enrolled in district or other charter schools. The fate of the remaining 470 is uncertain.

"We're also looking to see how accurate the 1,250 figure is," Gallard adds. "Unfortunately, the charter has a history of misrepresenting the number of students it had enrolled. That is why they overbilled us by approximately $1 million."

No wonder Palmer's math scores were in the toilet. Its own bean-counters can't add.

Finally, there are no words to describe the irony of what has happened to Hub of Hope, Project HOME's seasonal social-service center for the homeless in Suburban Station. For three years, Hub of Hope occupied donated space during the winter months in the concourse so that the homeless could grab a cup of coffee or a few minutes with a case worker or doctor.

But this year, Hub of Hope is homeless. As my colleague Helen Ubiñas reported last week, the landlord who had donated the space would no longer be able to "due to complaints from tenants and brokers."

Ubiñas couldn't get the landlord to elaborate. But Hub of Hope was hidden in a remote concourse corner, among mostly empty storefronts.

So who was complaining? The cockroaches?

Project HOME's Karen Orrick is now scrambling to find other space for Hub of Hope. But it will be hard to beat the concourse, where outreach workers were better able to reach the most chronically homeless.

"We want to be where people congregate, and the concourse is where many go to get warm," Orrick told Ubiñas. "We know there is a problem, and being there we are able to offer a solution."

Can no one step up?

These good people - Tessema, Anderson, Pauling and Orrick - are not frail flowers who wilt when things don't go their way. They're not change-phobic.

But there's a difference between inflicting change on others and blindsiding them - especially when it affects decisions about how they care for and educate their kids, whether they can earn a living and how they'll help those in need.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog

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