The Mother of All NIMBYs

[davajohnston]

sorry, but there is no such thing as affordable housing in Franklin. When land is expensive and demand is high prices will go up. The only way to keep prices down is to reduce costs and that normaly means cuts in quality and what the houses come with. I am not an advocate in building cheap, lower quality houses because 19 out of 20 times a pourly developed, cheap neighborhood always end the same way. If you want affordable housing, move to a more affordable area of town.

Of course there is! They're called apartments.......but nobody wants to suggest that the low income should live in apartments. For some reason, despite the past two years, we still labor under the delusion that homeownership is a right, and not a privledge.

[chadstory]

I just got an email from Alderman Moore (canned newsletter) and he is all about density. Please email your alders and let them know if you are for or against all this density in order to help increase the "affordability" of select areas.

My issue is it is proven that increased density puts a great deal of pressure on infrastructure and requires more capital to maintain. I have been on all over Franklin and there is plenty of affordable houses available but the problem is it would require them to buy established homes. Trying to increase density will only create a greater liability for all of Franklin and will increase the tax Burdon for maintenance. I guess I am just getting tired of the city constantly putting projects in motion for certain areas of Franklin yet leaves other areas of Franklin on the hook to fund a disproportionate amount of benefit at tax payers expense.

So please email our reps and let them know if you are for or hopefully against.

[jim chittum]

I am somewhat of an "expert" on affordable housing since I have lived in affordable housing all my life. My first home, a log cabin in the Ozarks was extremely affordable. We had no running water, electricity or indoor plumbing. Since the first three determinants of price in real estate are location, location, and location, that also held down the value to approximately zero. In fact the place was so affordable that it was given to my family by a relative if we would agree to pay the taxes.

Later, my family moved north where we lived the remainder of my childhood in rented housing until I was in high school when we purchased a home for $4,500 in a small town in Southern Illinois for $4,500. Again, the price was driven by location, since my Dad had to drive 30 miles to get to work.

After I graduated from high school and left home, it was back to renting apartments. When I got married, my wife and I rented apartments for eight years until we could save enough money for a 20% down payment on our first home. Since then I have owned a series of ever better homes in ever better locations until I ended up in our current home here in the Mill. Nice home. Excellent location. And affordable for us, since we could afford to pay for it.

Every single one of these homes, including our current home, has been "affordable" in the sense that my family paid the rent, mortgage, and taxes from our own resources. The use of the word "affordable" for subsidized housing is just another instance of torturing the language to create euphemisms for political correctness. What is really being proposed is that people be provided "unaffordable" housing, or housing that they cannot afford, by virtue of receiving some sort of subsidy.

Now this may be a good idea or a bad idea, depending upon your particular political persuasion, but I just wish that they would call it what it is for a change: "unaffordable" housing.

[Chris]

I am somewhat of an "expert" on affordable housing since I have lived in affordable housing all my life. My first home, a log cabin in the Ozarks was extremely affordable. We had no running water, electricity or indoor plumbing.

Being a frontier family, how often did y'all have to fight off Indian raids?

[jim chittum]

Chris,

At first the Pawnee gave us fits, stealing our pigs and women. Sometimes they would return the women, but never the pigs. Then the raids became sporadic and finally stopped when the Indians (Indigenous natives) built a casino using Federal funding on the Lake of the Ozarks. After that the only time that we saw them was when their Lear jets occasionally flew overhead on the way to Cabo San Lucas.