Letters to the editor for Nov. 27
Helping those without shelter
With respect to the article “Advocacy groups ‘takes’ vacant middle school for homeless, demands housing solutions,” I find this to be a form of protest and fully support the movement by the unsheltered folks and advocacy group involved.
With so little being done about the issue of people living without proper shelter not only in Tacoma, but all over the state, advocating needs to be taken to another level. How many people need to die due to not having housing before policies change and representatives begin listening?
I find a need to speak on this issue because I am a resident in Olympia. I see people who do not have adequate housing living in tents on the side of the road and wonder — wouldn’t the simple solution be to give them a house and community to thrive? I look at other solutions around the country like Community First! Village in Texas or even Quixote Village or the Plum Street Village in our town.
Even with these options, there are still RVs around town and hundreds without proper shelter and housing. If we look at Community First! as an example, they started with an RV park for the homeless, which slowly grew into a large community of people who care for each other, and this community is nearly self-sustaining. It can be done. Olympia could take a few notes from this and begin saving the lives of unsheltered people.
Meagan Gallegos, Olympia
Fire regulation rollback could be dangerous
It was disappointing to read about Olympia’s Fire Marshal Kevin Bossard’s proposal to loosen fire safety regulations for local ADUs. The article hinted at the browbeating Bossard has faced by the Land Use and Environmental Committee, City Council, the Planning Commission, builders, and housing advocates who are looking at any way to make infill housing such as ADUs more affordable to construct.
Looking at ‘any way’? At the cost of safety standard rollbacks? Since moving to Olympia in May, I have read about several large, destructive residential and commercial fires. It is difficult to see any wisdom in the simultaneous push to allow larger ADUs, remove the on-site owner requirement, and now eliminate some fire code protections. The $125,000-$150,000 ADU structures mentioned in the article are probably built from thin wood and vinyl — making for a quick burn and potential loss of life without adequate suppression. The proximity of ADUs to other structures magnifies the safety issue.
The lengths city decision makers are going in pursuit of ADUs is excessive. More and larger structures, with absentee owners, and relaxed fire regulations is a tinderbox Olympia doesn’t need.
Jeremy Mott, Olympia
We are in the middle of a war
We are in the middle of a war. COVID-19 has killed more Americans than several wars combined; infection rates are spiking all over the country. Our health care workers are massively overworked and vulnerable to the disease themselves. Many hospitals are literally overflowing.
What these workers really need is for us not to become patients, nor cause anyone else to do so. We can do this by following the directives of our public health officers, who must tell us what we don’t want to hear. Unfortunately, many of them are quitting their jobs due to total exhaustion, threats from ordinary citizens, and repudiation by some elected officials.
What are we Americans made of? Our forbears on the “home front” in World War II endured the strict rationing of meat, gasoline and sugar, cooked without any canned goods, and got no weather reports. Of course they complained, but they did not protest!
What we are asked to do in this war includes wearing a mask in public, staying 6 feet apart, avoiding large groups, and washing our hands. This is nothing compared to what our forbears went through. And we should consider our public health officers to be trustworthy platoon leaders in this fight.
Margaret Hunt, Olympia