Letters

Regarding “Governor Vetoes Thiele’s Affordable Housing Fund Legislation” [27east.com, December 21]: The discussion continues on how to solve the issue of affordable housing on the East End. It’s been going round and round for the last 20 years, and very little has actually been done.

The solution is not to take money from the high-end purchases and give it to someone supporting the high-end residents. You know, the people working two jobs to stay where they were born. Those folk who are the community, not the commodity, here on the East End.

The solution has always been there, but no politician who wants to keep their job will propose it. Our supervisor, Jay Schneiderman, knows what needs to be done: Relax our exclusionary zoning laws to allow for smaller building plots to develop real opportunities for affordable housing to be built.

For anyone who wants to look up what might happen in the future, look up Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and see what happened there.

You can’t expect elected officials to commit political suicide and propose building what the public does not want, which is the wrong perception of lower property values. But you can take the issue to the courts, where judges who don’t answer to the public preside.

That’s what happened in New Jersey and eventually will happen in New York. Don’t know if it will be in my lifetime or my kids’, or their children, but it will happen.

Bob Schepps

Southampton