After reading Justine Gonzalez-Berg’s insightful columns on housing in this paper it is increasingly clear that only about 1 percent of town truly cares about the housing crisis here. The rest don’t. Or at least care only at times when it comes up in amiable conversation. 

Maybe it’s disillusionment or privilege or a different belief system but without collective action on this there will be no community of Port Townsend as many of us imagine it to be, or could be. No housing = no future.

Where will workers live? Where will young families raise their kids? Do you think the artists and musicians in town can afford $1,500/month just to stay out of the rain and smoke? Who in their right mind would choose this place when they are committing 60-percent plus of your income on rent? Do you think time will simply switch its direction and rent will fall to the $100/month for an entire Uptown house, as it was in the ‘70s?

“Be grateful,” people say, “that you even have a bed.”

I’m not sure the real estate agents in town (no matter how goodhearted) realize that they are the middlemen in a desperate and devastating class division. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Sorry, I am angry today, and I am sad, the smoke has reminded me that no solutions will ever do and our time here is always temporary.

Conner Bouchard-Roberts
PORT TOWNSEND