Unaffordable Housing

To the Editor: 
On Aug. 1, I once again felt the pain for our homeless as I read the article about the approval of affordable housing ordinances in Avalon. This Borough’s Council and its professional staff came together to appease the wealthy property owners who filled the room.
A spokesman for the council made clear twice during the discussion that this is not subsidized housing. “This is not Section 8 housing,” he said. “We are talking about essential workers like teachers, firemen and police officers who can work here but cannot afford to live here.”
I have family members who are in this group throughout our area. While they are certainly not overpaid for their service to the community, they are by far not the lowest paid public employees. Not in Avalon or anywhere else.
How about the public work’s employees or even the clerical staff who work in many communities they cannot afford to live in? Going beyond the public employees are the many service employees working in restaurants where they cannot afford to eat. Cleaning and maintaining facilities they could never think to live in.
These are not people who refuse to work. They are not trying to cheat the system. They are trying to survive in what has become a very selfish society.
The Fair Housing Act of 1985 has been circumvented and ignored almost from its inception. Under Gov. Christie, the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) was decimated and its responsibilities were handed to the courts where everyone owes his livelihood to politicians. Believe it or not, there is no judicial path to a judgeship.
So, where will Avalon’s low-income workers live? In a voucher motel in Middle Township, where else?
Workers such as this from all over the area are placed in these drug havens. This deplorable voucher system is administered by our freeholders who are a victim of their own success. They are such a powerful political machine, they operate in total impunity. Feel-good projects flourish while issues such as this go on and our bridges are falling down.
Middle Township allowed a developer much the same restrictions so its own needy cannot live in the affordable housing paid for by taxpayers. Still, the developer not only takes all the income, the taxpayers get a double whammy when they have to make up for the shortfall the developer does not pay because of a scam known as a PILOT program, or payment in lieu of taxes. They simply don’t pay their fair share because of a deal cut with the governing body of our community.
Sooner or later, many of these despaired workers slip into addictions. They lose their jobs and often go from the motels to the woods. If they are not lucky enough to succumb to all this, they will eventually be institutionalized – wards of the state at some level or another. Now, we will get to pay big money for their care, because we didn’t care.