Affordable Housing: We Can Fix This

To the Editor: 
Cape Hope’s intention of building a homeless shelter will not serve our citizens needing basic housing. Homeless shelters do serve the function of providing temporary emergency shelter for those in crisis, but a shelter must only be a short-term stay until a transition to a small apartment.
There is no affordable housing in this county.
I am aware of the problems facing property owners and tenants.
To make a simple word change from “nonconforming” to “rental unit” is $10,000.
Zoning applications, permit fees, engineering surveys, lawyer, and legal fees all add up to astronomical costs.
Material costs for construction and renovations continue to rise due to inflation. Skilled labor is not cheap. $100,000 can easily be invested for renovations.
If I charge $1,000 a month rent, how long will it take me to break even?
Another problem is finding quality tenants. I watched as my neighbor’s rental house was trashed – broken windows, smashed walls, and broken doors, among the carnage.
Many newer houses have attached garages with bathrooms, already drywalled and insulated. Easily converted into a compact one-bedroom apartment, renting in the $500 to $700 range, but the zoning process must be streamlined. Townships, ethically and morally, for the betterment and survival of our citizens, cannot charge $10,000 for a word change.
Without affordable housing, we lose a vast majority of our low-income workers, along with our small businesses, for lack of employees.
Many have lamented the conversion of rentals to Airbnbs and weekly rentals. If you are a landlord, charging $1,000 a month, and have not collected rent for two years, and watched as your property is trashed, and cannot evict, due to Gov. Murphy’s executive orders, and observed all your property rights being denied, decisions must be rendered.
A new business model, Airbnb, allows you “ innkeeper” rights of being paid, evict for cause, and Airbnb handles reservations and insurance, and rent is $1,000 a week, not a month.
As a small landlord of two units or less, I am ineligible for grants, subsidies, or loans, by law. I cannot collect rent or request assistance from my government. Corporations continue to purchase rental housing at an alarming rate. What happens when rental housing is controlled by three or four corporations?
Our county housing situation will evolve into the following – multiple-family dwelling units – generations of families living together, houses bought by employers, with one or two employees sharing a room, and six or eight employees sharing a house, one-bedroom boarding houses rented out by the week, and motels, with government subsidies of $1,000 to $2,000 a month, paid with tax dollars.
Homeless camps will continue to proliferate with the associated social ills.
Government built and controlled public housing has been a dismal failure. Many high rises have been demolished that were only five decades old. By comparison, I live in a 300-year-old house.
Small landlords are the solution. We provide investment money and sweat equity into affordable housing.
Government must not be allowed to create a housing crisis by bankrupting landlords and violation of property rights.
Citizens must demand housing reforms from our legislators that allow tenants and landlords to survive. Tenants have the right to affordable housing. Landlords must be allowed to build housing with property tax deductions, tax credits, and incentives. Contact Gov. Murphy and Sen. Testa to request housing reform.