Letters to the Editor

THANK YOU

Dear Editor

I would like to thank the Ryan “Duce” Morrisey Scholarship Committee for awarding me one of the high school scholarships this year. It means so much to me to be a part of remembering Duce.  It will help with the cost of my senior year at Malden Catholic. Thank you again.

Jake Reilly

ON AMAZON COMING

Dear Editor

I write in response to Navy Yard resident Tyler Coady’s recent Guest Op-Ed “Stay Away, Amazon.” Given the political status quo, Amazon coming to Boston would probably be a disaster for me: Personally, my rent increased 12 percent last year, and I will soon be displaced from Charlestown. Though I might find a job there, I suppose. I would only hope that someone as wealthy as Tyler, who can afford to live in the Navy Yard, one of the most expensive locations of Boston, supports new housing and doesn’t just oppose new jobs. Because the problem is not immigration into the city, or young people getting jobs, or employers providing jobs: The problem is wealthy Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) types who oppose new housing being built, and then, in feigned moral outrage, also oppose new jobs being created because the rents are too high. When Sweden had a housing problem in the ’60s, the government set a 10-year goal of creating a million apartments and did it. The current housing goals of the metro Boston area, with a similar population to Sweden at the time, are ridiculously low and a moral outrage. There is consensus among economists: Building more housing lowers the rent. To deny this is as unacceptable as denying climate change, and to bring about climate change by forcing people to commute long distances from affordable housing in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. We should be building as many jobs and as much housing as we can in mass-transit-accessible Boston, and it is a moral outrage that we are not. We will soon be Palo Alto, where the tiny illegal closet I’m renting would go for $4,000 a month instead of $1,000 a month, and the only residents will be the rich, white, and extremely affluent. I will do everything in my power to stop that, but the political power of renters is limited, and I encourage wealthy owners to do the right thing and support new housing, since they are the ones with all the power. Working renters can’t always take vacation days to go to daytime workday zoning meetings. We have families and, increasingly, second jobs. It is up to the owners to do the right thing.

Andrew Criscione

OFFENDED BY THE ADVERTISEMENT

Dear Editor,

As a longtime reader of the Charlestown Patriot Bridge, most recently I have been greatly disturbed by seeing the ad for “The Cannabis Queen.” (In the cannabis kingdom Lauren rules!)

Although I am well aware of the new legal status of marijuana use and even the medicinal claims, it is also well known that marijuana is often the first drug that many adolescents use, which often leads to other drugs. Our brains are not fully developed until age 25 and early marijuana use makes a major impact on this development.

Like many other communities, our neighborhood has been dramatically impacted by substance use/abuse. I feel strongly that a local, community paper is not an appropriate venue for this type of advertisement.

Susie Howard, LMHC, LADC1, CADC2

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