Last Stand to host second annual Welcome Back – Give Back Event
77% of Key West renters, owners ‘cost burdened’
77% of Key West renters, owners ‘cost burdened’
BY PRU SOWERS
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Key West ci
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What is amazing are the numbers of “affordable” housing units that the City has allowed or colluded to have removed to support its various ‘looking good’ projects. e.g. the NOAA installation supplanted some fifty to sixty affordable homes in what used to be a manufactured housing park. What has that monstrosity provided the community, other than a waste of space?
Also, not to be forgotten, are the eighty to a hundred units that were removed when a sizable swath of the Stadium mobile home park was cleared.
Aluminum or not, those were ‘affordable’ housing units.
Within the same context, let us also consider the usurpation of the Glynn Archer School as the site for yet another city hall. This was just plain silly.
Why, the question begs, does a city 2 miles by 4 miles need a full city block to house its machinations? The facilities on Simonton Street could have been renovated for a fraction of the cost.
And speaking of the cost…who bears the burden? You and me.
Perhaps the bobble-headed administrators felt they needed a daily reminder of their great triumph over affordability by having the NOAA building directly across the street.
Maybe the solution is to go back to the days when the rich folks had maid’s quarters in their homes to house the people who did all the work serving them and maintaining their property. Make it a law that each home worth more than X$’s must have include housing for one or more staff on site or provided by the homeowner elsewhere on the island. They are able to bid up the prices on these vacation homes and turn them into jewel boxes that the rest of us can only dream of, they can provide housing for the people who do the work that makes them and keeps them so valuable, just like mansion owners did in the past.
Food – shelter – safety. Those are the three most basic human needs, without any one of which, no human can thrive. Please let us not pit the help for the homeless against the help for the workforce. There is no comparison. Even if I choose to work three jobs in order to be here in this wonderful environment, I am better off than my fellow human who is without these basic needs. Nobody WANTS to be homeless. These people are in this condition temporarily or they will simply get very sick and die. Do not judge the whole by a handful of bad parts. We are federally obligated to provide shelter for the people we want off our streets so they won’t disrupt business and tourism. We are only compassionately inclined to help our low paid workers.
Nothing is gained, and much lost, by thinking and claiming publicly that our workforce is more deserving of help than our 600 – 1200 citizens so ravaged by life that they have absolutely nothing.
The lifting of height limits would be disastrous. Most people would not walk across the street to see a new highrise building. The attraction here is the charm of a town in a turn of the century time warp. Muck around with that, and goose is cooked, so to speak. No more golden eggs. Why not put the units on Stock Island? More room, less disruption to downtown commerce when building takes place. The big idea behind restricting transient licenses was force homeowners with space to rent to rent it longer term. How did that work out?