To the Editor:
“Affordable” housing is a good idea, isn’t it? Supervisor Hudgins
certainly thinks so. She wanted to raise homeowners’ taxes even
more to provide more of it. Who could object to the idea of homes
for the homeless, goes the thinking. A civic duty almost, much in the
way that the county’s civic “improvement” bonds nearly always seem
to garner a two-thirds vote (it’s your money that’s being borrowed,
folks).
Supervisor Hudgins is now extolling the virtues of “residential studio
units” for “individuals, new college grads, those on fixed incomes,
and those with special needs.” Pretty much everyone. But here’s the
thing: who decides who gets gifted with “affordable” housing? What
is the basis of the selection/rejection process? Might long commuters
with jobs in Fairfax County who have not lucked out here feel a tad
short-changed?
I wonder how much “affordable” housing the county should have,
what the size of the staff to administer such housing would be, why
the county is in the landlord business at all, and what it does with the
rent it collects.
The Soviet Union, older folks will remember, had unlimited
“affordable” housing. What became of the Soviet Union, younger folks
will ask.
Harry Locock
Reston