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Rockland affordable housing action
Lauren Abbate’s recent BDN article on midcoast’s affordable housing shortages discloses the limited vision of Rockland’s government. Ten years ago, 449 affordable housing units were identified as in need of rehabilitation in Rockland. The inventory uses established planning methodologies for the whole city, and it provides photos and descriptions of potential residential units within Rockland’s mixed-use downtown structures.
If just 5 percent of that inventory had been rehabilitated each year, there would be more than 200 affordable housing units today. Recently, Rockland’s city councilors expressed satisfaction at achieving just “one to twenty” new units — over a 10-year period — through the “Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance.”. Clearly such low expectations, and a decade of gazing at the shortage without taking action, are the problem.
Rehabilitation can be supported by the state’s low-income housing tax credit program with the added benefit that construction specifications are a higher standard than Rockland’s building code. The ordinance requires new “Workforce Units” to be visually similar and use the same access within a new development while rehabilitation of existing units in neighborhoods maintains the diversity Rockland residents prefer.
Rockland needs to commit to rehabilitate these affordable housing units, identified in 2011 by University of Maine graduate intern Daniel Curtis. The units are already connected to Rockland’s infrastructure, with no negative impacts on wetlands. Most importantly, rehabilitating what we have doesn’t cause additional overloads to neighborhoods already in crisis from years of over-looked stormwater runoff and raw sewage failures.
Barbara Mogel
Rockland
Into harm’s way
When we send our armed forces into battle — into harm’s way — we try to equip them with everything we can to keep them safe. Why aren’t we doing this for our health care workers who are on the front lines of the war against COVID 19?
This letter is written to my fellow Mainers who are still hesitant to get vaccinated or wear a mask. Wouldn’t they want their son or daughter to have the best firearms, flak vest, helmet and other protective gear if they were going into battle? Wouldn’t they want them to have vaccinations to protect them from diseases on the field of battle?
Yet roughly 25 percent of Mainers who are eligible to get a COVID-19 shot still have not done so. More than 90 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated, and they are putting health care workers at grave risk. Being put in “harm’s way” is defined as “caused to be in a dangerous situation.” That’s working in a hospital in today’s world.
Please, please think of these brave women and men who are caring for our loved ones and friends, and help them to be as safe as possible. People should get COVID shots and wear their mask. If not, they may end up in a hospital and their life may depend on those nurses, doctors and others who they put in harm’s way. They can do something that will help ensure that health workers are there when they desperately need them.
Roy Hitchings
Camden
Prevent Medicare privatization
Would people be shocked to find that an attempt to privatize Medicare in order to funnel profits to Wall Street investors is underway?
Direct contracting entities were created in 2020 during the Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration. Medicare patients are enrolled in direct contracting entities without their consent or even knowledge when and if their doctor or other provider signs up. Doctors are enticed to do so by promises that their fees will go up, but patients experience fewer benefits and are restricted from receiving care they need, all to profit the new direct contracting entity middleman.
There is already one direct contracting entity in Maine, which incorporated in early 2021. Most of the other states have direct contracting entities in them by now also.
What can Medicare recipients do? Ask health care providers if they’re using direct contracting entities. People can opt out by changing providers — but only if they know about it.
People can also sign a petition on Physicians for a National Health Program to stop this sneaky, back door attempt at privatizing Medicare: https://pnhp.salsalabs.org/DCEpetitionSeptember2021/index.html
Lisa Savage
Solon