Letters to the editor for Feb. 10

Oppose rent control

Even before COVID-19 hit, Washington faced a housing crunch. Washington’s population boomed but housing creation did not keep up. As a result, Thurston County housing costs have gone up.

Legislators need to keep this fact in mind as they develop policies to get us through COVID and address our housing needs. We need immediate subsidies to help people cover rent, we need public investment in affordable housing, and we need to make it easier to build new homes and apartments.

Unfortunately, some legislators are focused on a bill that would halt housing creation and make Washington more expensive. Senate Bill 5139 would institute the strictest rent control regime in the entire country. New research shows that a statewide cap on rent in Washington would make our housing crisis worse. Rent control would reduce housing creation by 15,000 homes over the next 10 years. That is the equivalent of erasing an entire year’s worth of new homes — homes that new neighbors and longtime residents can never move into.

I urge my legislators to vote no on rent control and support housing creation and housing support instead.

Curtis Bidwell, Olympia

Sacred people, sacred Earth

GreenFaith, a global, multifaith, grassroots alliance is sponsoring a community webinar at noon March 11. It will be presenting demands to governments and financial institutions around the world. Three of these demands include:

• 100% renewable energy for all.
• Global finance aligned with compassionate values, including COVID recovery and beyond.
• Jobs and healthcare for all.

Please join us to hear the other demands while enjoying music, presentations and recognizing the sacredness of our Earth.

From our group’s mission: “We envision a world transformed, in which humanity in all its diversity has developed a shared reverence for life on Earth. Together we are building resilient, caring communities and economies that meet everyone’s needs and protect the planet. The era of conquest, extraction and exploitation has given way to cooperation and community. The good life is one of connectedness — with each other and all of nature. It is a world of flourishing life that replaces despair with joy, scarcity with shared abundance, and privilege with justly distributed power.”

Sandra Ware, Olympia

Challenges of homelesness

My heart goes out to our ever-growing homeless population.

In the late 1940s, I lived in my grandmother’s boarding house. ”Hobos” sometimes did work for her in exchange for a meal.

In the 1960s in Olympia, a lovely “angel of Fourth Avenue” owned a cafe surrounded with a rooming house. No one ever went without a meal and a bed if needed.

Here we are in 2021 and there are endless reasons why there are so many homeless. Many of these folks never thought it would happen to them, and some like being part of a camping tribe. There’s addiction, mental illness, many extenuating circumstances.

It is unfortunate that desperation and/or activism led to a group storming into our Olympia hotel. Shutting down a business and spending tax money for arrests isn’t the best way to make change.

But the fact remains, we must create much more low-income housing!

Our small tiny house project and a few of the benevolent churches are wonderful steps but barely scratch the surface.

What can be done? What must we do? What kind of a town do you want to live in?

This isn’t just a problem of those with low or no income. This is also a problem of the privileged!

If we point our finger at others, remember three fingers are pointing back at yourself.

Let’s put on our thinking caps, dear community!

J. Cyr, Yelm