Like a true Jedi master, Star Wars creator George Lucas has announced plans to build a complex of affordable housing for 224 low-income families in a plush neighborhood renowned for its multi-millionaire residents.
The cost of housing has soared higher than the Millennium Falcon in the last two decades, making it harder than ever before for a young family or struggling pensioner to find a place they can call home. The Star Wars ‘ director’s bold plan to create a large affordable housing development for those in need is something of a Jedi masterstroke.
According to Star Wars lore, one of the tenets of the Jedi code is that a “Jedi must put the needs of the community above the needs of individuals.”
At first glance the magnanimous gesture in behalf of Lucas paints him in the favorable light of a true “guardian of civilization,” but there’s a little bit more to this story than meets the eye.
The Daily Mail reports that in 2012 the Star Wars director’s plans to build a Lucasfilm Ltd. studio complex on Lucas Valley Road was blocked by his millionaire neighbours.
Lucas dropped the plans because he didn’t want his name associated what other people might view as the machinations of an “evil empire.”
Yet the Star Wars director has 1,039 acres of land sitting empty on his Grady Ranch estate in Marin County, California. So what’s a rich man to do?
Propose a project that would cost around £200 million, spanning 52 acres, and one which would provide 120 two-bedroom and three-bedroom homes for low-income families and a four-story building with 104 one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments for pensioners, that’s what!
The complex would be built just a few meters from Lucas’s very own Skywalker ranch, and because the Star Wars director is providing the capital behind the project he gets to hand-pick who will live there.
Yoda once famously said, “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.” But rest assured, Lucas’s lawyer Gary Giacomini explained that his client’s project is not a form of retaliation against his neighbours.
Speaking to CBS , Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey also reinforced that the planned project had nothing to do with the Star Wars director getting some sort of twisted payback.
“George Lucas said to himself, ‘If I’m not going to do what I wanted to do there, what can I do that would be really beneficial to this community?’”
[Image via TV-Film Schools.]
