Letters to the Editor

Affordable Housing

First, Community Hospital was turned into a temporary homeless shelter – and soon it will become an all-purpose rehab, housing and mental health services center. And now, just four blocks away from that forthcoming facility, a 72-unit, 66-parking-space “affordable” housing development will be jammed in next to a busy elementary school at the end of the very narrow Fountain Street – already a traffic nightmare every time school lets out.

It has become so painfully obvious that the point of redistricting the neighborhood surrounding Community Hospital and Fountain Street from the 4th District into the rear end of the 3rd District was so that the city can use this neighborhood as a dumping ground for “undesirable” facilities that adversely affect neighborhoods. Increased traffic, overcrowding, decreased parking and decreased property values result from pretending that the burden of these facilities is shared equally between districts, while leaving precious, city-favored 3rd District neighborhoods like Belmont Shore unscathed.

And, of course, the much-touted “meetings” (actually PR presentations), which are supposedly for the purpose of informing citizens and inviting their feedback, are in the time-honored tradition of pretending to solicit citizen input only after all decisions have been made and all contracts so smugly signed.

Gerrymandering to benefit wealthy neighborhoods at the expense of the middle and lower classes is underhanded and unconscionable – which means it’s yet again business as usual for the City of Long Beach.

Merry Colvin