Letters

Has the happy homeowner referenced by Jay Schneiderman [“In The Midst Of Skyrocketing Sales, Town Board Agrees To Hire Consultant To Assist Assessors,” 27east.com, May 5] considered the following questions: Is this your primary residence? Is it your first and only home? Are you married?

If so, one is only paying capital gains on $350,000. If not, one is paying capital gains on $550,000. If it is anything else, remember to add your depreciation tax. And when this is done, where is one going to live?

This inflation of housing prices is a nationwide event. The happy notion that everyone can just go live somewhere less expensive is entirely false. And all these wealthy people who don’t do their own lawns or clean their own houses or pools, where will they get help? Actual fact: about five people who work at a local grocery store actually live in this town. The rest commute from, at minimum, a half hour’s drive away.

What are the roots of this issue? An essential for life, shelter has been turned into a commodity. As a society, we have decided that people who push paper and buttons are more important than those who provide actual necessary services. And, so sorry, you don’t deserve to live in nice places. You just don’t work hard enough or aren’t smart enough.

Our banking system:

How is it that a jumbo mortgage (over $400,000) is made at lower interest rates than smaller loans? Corporations who pursue only one thing — stock price increase — at the expense of their employees’ welfare. Wages don’t even match inflation.

Attitudes: How did our school taxes get to be about twice our municipal taxes?

On a personal level, what do you really need to be happy?

Building codes. Zoning. Read “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson to see some of the pernicious roots of this system.

Difficult choices must be made. Indeed. Do we want to be the next Los Angeles or San Francisco? Fiddling with tax rates and tax bases is what will happen.

Nothing will be resolved until the entire issue is examined.

I am not hopeful.

Amy Paradise

Hampton Bays