Carol Gaido-Schmidt – 5/30/07

This page was last updated on June 12, 2008.

Let’s be smarter on housing; Carol Gaido-Schmidt; Beaver County Times; May 30, 2007.

In one previous letter Ms. Gaido-Schmidt lobbied for more taxes on “the rich” and in another thought it was great that Rochester got state taxpayer dollars to upgrade its high school football field.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“We are facing a housing crisis. Not a lack of housing, but an excess.”

[RWC] For some folks, everything is a “crisis.”

“The area is losing population, yet they continue to build huge housing developments, tearing down trees and destroying the environment. Animals are being forced into populated areas. The trees are no longer there to help with the ecological balance. Homes in established neighborhoods cannot be sold. People are losing homes that they can no longer afford and cannot sell.”

[RWC] FYI, “established neighborhoods” tends to be code for borough and city neighborhoods.

“Why is this allowed to continue? I know. It’s a free country and developers have to work.”

[RWC] Ms. Gaido-Schmidt has it backwards. Developers don’t build developments unless there’s a market. If she wants to “blame” someone, she needs to blame those of us who want new homes and don’t want to buy old houses with tiny closets, old plumbing, little or no insulation, inefficient heating/air conditioning systems, et cetera in less-than-desirable school districts.

“Why do they insist on being so irresponsible? They are creating an economic crisis and an ecological one.”

[RWC] Making the most effective use of your earnings is “irresponsible?”

“Instead of creating new housing developments in previously unpopulated areas, why not tear down some old eyesores and build new homes? Many homes throughout the region are ready to be renewed. It would help everyone.”

[RWC] Let me get this straight. Ms. Gaido-Schmidt wants a homebuyer to buy an old house and pay to tear it down before building a new one in a neighborhood full of dilapidated houses? Yeah, right. Exactly how would this “help everyone?”

“It is time to take a hard look at the shape of Beaver County and what we want for the future before it is too late.”

[RWC] If there’s a crisis, it’s that too many people want to tell the rest of us what to do.