LETTER: So this is affordable housing! Really?

Posted

You’ve [the City of Port Townsend] at long last responded to the affordable housing crisis with a loan of $250,000 and a gift of land to the Olympic Housing Trust that promises a 900-square-foot apartment for no more than $1,000 a month, open to householders making roughly $36,000-$52,000 per year.

These are a needy cross-section? This is affordable housing?

I have a friend who has moved to Port Townsend recently. Living off a Social Security check, she qualified for a smallish one-bedroom apartment for under $300 a month in a housing complex not far from the center of town.

This is what I call “affordable housing.” The federal government stepped in to help get the project off the ground.

We might have done close to the same, had the very best minds in our community been tapped to help solve the problem.

But no. David Timmons spoke and, thinking caps mislaid, you jumped.

Over the years, I’ve proposed many a solution to the affordability crisis, yet couldn’t make any headway. My solutions ranged far and wide, from rehabilitation of available housing stock to new construction of small homes that would qualify, in my own terms, as affordable to a much broader cross-section of those in need than those targeted by the Housing Trust.

You might have sold the land that you gave the trust and used the monies to invest in a number of case studies that advanced a broad variety of aims and needs in terms of truly affordable shelter.

Shame on the all of you for not doing so.

TODD WEXMAN

Port Townsend