Letters to the editor for Nov. 20
State should lead efforts to house the homeless
The housing-first concept is a great approach to help end homelessness in Washington state, but it needs to be implemented at a state level and not through nonprofits and local agencies. The reason I feel this way is because there is never funding to help people — there is always a waitlist, or the program is only designed to help people that meet a certain criteria.
Washington needs to design its own state agency or incorporate a homeless housing program into an existing state agency like the Department of Social and Health Services to help with the homeless crisis. Then the state could oversee the programs and the funding on a larger scale, making the services more accessible and equitable across the state.
The state could implement more prevention measures like deposits and short-term assistance with rent and could also refer clients to nonprofit agencies still using the programs already in place. By the state addressing this issue, it could do more harm-reduction intervention and promote a healthy community by including mental health, substance abuse, youth, and family services. It also could include more prevention measures, financial assistance, relocation, and pop up shelters, and build relationships with employers to hire houseless people.
If the state acts now to integrate a new program to help the homeless, then we might not have a homeless crisis in the future.
Danielle M. Hickman, Tacoma
Zoning laws are racist and expensive
The writer of a recent letter to the editor blamed capitalism for the homeless problem. Regardless, what we have is not a free market. It is a heavily regulated market. That happened because some promoted using the laws for racial discrimination.
In 1910, when Baltimore adopted zoning laws, the mayor was reported to have said, “Blacks … should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.”
Land use laws such as zoning also are expensive. In a New York Times op-ed, economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti wrote, “The creeping web of these regulations has smothered wage and gross domestic product growth in American cities by a stunning 50 percent over the past 50 years. Without these regulations, our research shows, the United States economy today would be 9 percent bigger — which would mean, for the average American worker, an additional $6,775 in annual income”.
As a free market advocate with the Libertarian Party researching this issue, I have come to the conclusion that zoning created more problems than it solved. It has added to the tension between minorities, especially Blacks, and whites. Zoning has contributed to the housing crisis by limiting the supply. Zoning has been a financial disaster for families and businesses. Today we all pay the price for racism.
Let’s open the market to other alternatives.
Michael H. Wilson, Lacey
Good journalism presents both sides of a story
Jeremy Mott’s recent letter to the editor “Not all opposition rooted in ‘fear’” pointed out that The Olympian reporting of the Olympia Planning Commission’s hearing on zoning changes had given a sounding board to advocates for greater housing density. I agree.
In addition, these same advocates have used heavy racist, elitist, and ageist rhetoric to characterize people with legitimate concerns about proposed zoning revisions. Concerns that include: environmental impacts, not following the city’s plan for growth, and exacerbating instead of improving housing affordability. All this as outside investment firms get rid of affordable older housing to make way for unaffordable new housing.
The proposed revisions are going to the Olympia City Council in December and would allow larger two-story accessory dwelling units (ADUs), duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, and small apartments on tiny lots in low-density neighborhoods. They provide insufficient tools to monitor the density that is likely to increase greatly above allowed limits.
Last year the Growth Management Hearings Board invalidated the city’s Missing Middle plan for similar concerns and found the plan did not follow the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) nor the Growth Management Act (GMA). But The Olympian recently downplayed the board’s decision in its article “Proposed residential zoning code changes will be heard Wednesday. Here’s what they mean” as only being about parking. Both recent Olympian articles demonstrate that the paper needs to take a more balanced and accurate approach in its articles.
Walter R. Jorgensen, Tumwater