PUTNEY-The affordable housing article presents developers, past Selectboard members, and other town employees as progressive and compassionately concerned about the homeless and low-income residents, and those of us questioning the project as troublemakers who look down on the poor and needy.
But it's a farce to call an $11.7 million project affordable and progressive! That construction fee breaks down to $468,000 per apartment, which is outrageous. Not only that, but residents at the three already-existing Windham & Windsor Housing Trust developments in town report shoddy workmanship, cheap materials, and unanswered complaints regarding ceilings falling down, laundry machines out of order, and other rental concerns.
The state has a much better alternative: Instead of paying corporations to come in and lump at-risk tenants all together next to an interstate exit in a town with no cheap food and little mass transit, grants are now available for homeowners willing to construct housing literally in their backyard.
That's what I call affordable!
Mark Borax
Putney
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