Last fall, I read through a housing survey sponsored by a new group of town officials called the Affordable Housing Trust Committee. As I read a prologue which suggested to me how I should answer, I wondered about things, beyond what looked like a biased survey.
Sadly, I may be living in poverty. There was a mass migration of young people from Stockbridge who began to move away to find sustaining work after GE and the mills began to shut down 50 years ago. A handful of us have returned. I live in my parents’ house, where I once lived as a statistically valuable young person. Now I am old, low income. I do not want a new house. I plan on leaving this one feet-first.
There are low-income people in town. Maybe they live as I do, on family property purchased decades ago. Many old family names are still here. Others might live in Pine Woods or Heaton Court. I am not sure how needy we are, beyond a desire to win the lottery. As a town, we have exceeded state requirements for low-income housing for years.
Therefore, changing zoning and building multi-family homes make me wonder. Does anyone here still remember why we developed our current zoning? And workforce housing normally results from people working. The chicken still precedes the egg. My generation left town because the local jobs were all locked up and the principal employers were leaving for good. Are there new living wage jobs to drive new housing needs? Is this the government’s job?
The Housatonic River, PCB tragedy is a major public health hazard for all. We have been kept in the dark for years, and now it is coming home to roost.
I noticed that some Committee members talked right over abutters who attended a project meeting. There are a whole bunch of residents here who know very little about this, and no, it’s not entirely their own fault. It’s everybody’s. We need our neighbors to wake us up when issues arise. When we vote, we don’t surrender our voices until the next election. We expect to be represented and included.
Members of AHT were not elected by us. They are appointed. They will be spending millions of tax dollars. This doesn’t mean they can’t do a good job, but it does mean they need to be transparent, and connect with their neighbors.
