Letters

What a shame that the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee felt so unheard by our elected officials that they felt pressed to disband their organization [“Bridgehampton CAC Members Resign En Masse, Plan To Form Independent Association,” 27east.com, October 20].

This only goes to confirm what I have long suspected: that the elected and appointed officials of Southampton Town neglect the hamlet of Bridgehampton. From over-building, to over-eventing, this hamlet is stomped on and seems to get everything the other towns forbid, whether it’s approving the frantic-paced tearing down of historic farmhouses, followed by the frantic development of the awful McMansions that replace them, to the roughshod way “events” are permitted without a word to local residents.

When I read about the “affordable housing crisis” in this area, it’s often reported much in the same way as a natural disaster, as if it’s occurring by some inexplicable natural force beyond human control. It’s the choices we make and the choices made for us that have brought us to this point. Every ranch, cape or farmhouse that is removed in Bridgehampton to make way for an 11-bedroom, 11-bathroom, tennis courted, pooled up “luxury” home destroys affordable housing. Every purchase of a home that becomes an “AirBnB” investment destroys affordable housing. Every approval to put one of these through destroys affordable housing.

We have lost our balance here. To speak of solutions while having created the problem is political double-talk.

I hope the people behind the Bridgehampton CAC regroup under a new banner ready to robustly push back on the forces behind the overdevelopment of this hamlet.

Susan White

Bridgehampton