Housing: The haves and have-nots
The Aegis published my May 24 letter to the editor regarding the quality of life in Harford County and the reliance of the county’s leaders on revenue from their developments, fancifully called mixed-use, as a cause for that erosion.
Mr. Ed Garono of Havre de Grace replied and made many misstatements in his reply. He seems to have relied on the title of my letter, “Greed of developers, leaders cannot mask corrosive income disparity” for his ad hominem. I highly doubt he read the substance of my letter. If he had, he would have read that about the juveniles who stole a car in Edgewood and gave chase to law enforcement, I said I was angry that their parents had not supervised them. I did not say that their violation of the law directly came from developers.
I did say though, that the county was not building enough affordable housing for the poor, for one-income families and fixed income senior citizens. I said that these people who desperately need affordable housing are being priced out.
I also noted that Harford County did not have the infrastructure for the overcrowding and traffic congestion that would ensue from its rapid growth in unaffordable housing for many groups, except rich retirees and high income families. I then noted such thoughtless and untrammeled development would not only degrade the environment it would cause essential workers to seek affordable housing elsewhere, much to the detriment of county residents who continue to live here.
The overcrowding would also cause a breakdown in the education infrastructure at a time of grave teacher shortage. I said that teachers and law enforcement officers too may be priced out of affordable housing if mixed use, expensive developments continue to proliferate, built up by big named developers, some local and others national. This would set up a vicious cycle of walled off affluence versus priced out and desperate poverty, a disparity that would lead to more crime and degradation. I also said that the rich too commit crimes as do their children and overcrowding the county, without the necessary infrastructure for folks rich or poor is not the way to go.
Mr. Garono has made my letter a blue versus red, a Democratic Party versus Republican Party partisan issue. He says if fewer houses are built the cost of existing houses will rise. But the issue is not only about the number of houses being built, it is also about the cost of houses being built, if the unhoused in Harford County or those waiting for affordable housing will be housed after these houses are built and if the delicate balance between nature and humans will be maintained if the types of houses being built are allowed year after year.
The housing lobby is extremely potent all over the country in places red or blue. Oklahoma City will be getting the tallest building in America thanks to a developer from California and that city’s residents are divided about the arrival of this skyscraper in their midst. While Mr. Garano says he went broke being a developer, developers of today are not struggling, local builders. They are mega corporate builders, both international and national with an outsized influence on our politicians, looking avariciously for land with no stake in the places they are building up.
These folks are not going broke because they have multiple building projects in disparate places all happening simultaneously. Like big ag and big oil there is big development. Profit is their only motive. Unless their feet are held to the fire by local politicians they will build willy nilly and leave. Local politicians whose ethos is to try and balance the budget with real estate revenues are not invested in the impact of development on nature or on climate change. They allow buildings to rise expeditiously for monies earned from real estate taxes. Big development, knowing this ethos, enters every undeveloped and underdeveloped place in America dangling real estate taxes as a lure.
My letter was about striking a balance, between housing for the haves and the have nots, housing that will erase nature and change climate versus housing sensitive to such existential matters and
housing by local builders, a few and affordable at a time, versus housing by national builders, many and exorbitant at a time. Mr.Garano has written a letter without context. He uses his rebuttal to me as a venue to spew his antipathy for Democrats, liberals, blue states and blue cities. He also suggests, although discreetly, that looking at the pictures of the thieves of Harford County is verboten because that would make one a racist. That would only be racist if it is not recognized, realistically, that the crimes in Harford County are not the exclusive domain of any one race.
Go to the courthouse in Bel Air and view those coming in and out. They are a diverse group of individuals, criminals and their victims, black, white and brown, male, female, non-binåry and trasgender and the only common denominator is that they’re human.
Usha Nellore, Bel Air
No indoctrination universities
It is not often that I agree with Ed Garono (“Letter got it wrong about Harford quality of life,” May 29), but I strongly support one point. No, not the one insisting that developers are my best friend. However, I do concur that parents should “not send your kids to indoctrination universities.” We have all seen the tragic results of putting elitist Ivy League graduates in positions of power. The parents of Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump should have been warned.
Glenn Gall, Bel Air
