Friday’s Letters to the Editor

Affordable homes

EDITOR: I recently came upon a Press Democrat special report titled “Housing Hard Times” and dated Oct. 29, 2000. Yes, 2000. It is an exhaustive study of affordable housing in Sonoma County at that time. It said exactly what is being said today. All the suggestions being made today were made back then. And they have not worked. Comparing then and now — we are worse off today than 20 years ago. Perhaps there is a better solution.

Why do some residents live in affordable housing, and others do not? One dictionary definition of “affordable” is “to be within one’s financial means.” So another way of saying “affordable” is that someone earns sufficient income to rent or own their own home. While we should continue to seek various means to reduce the cost of housing, the simple solution is that all America workers should earn sufficient income to afford decent housing. Pay workers an actual living wage, and they will be able to afford a home here.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

GENE A. HOTTEL

Santa Rosa

Reframe the issue

EDITOR: Latinos, who mostly vote Democratic, have recently shifted toward the Republican Party. A case in point is Texas’ 34th Congressional District, which recently elected conservative Republican Mayra Flores in a special election. She will serve out the remaining term of a Democrat who resigned in March. Flores, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, now describes herself as “Democrats’ worst nightmare” and is being treated like a rock star by Republicans in Congress.

Why is this shift happening? One reason is that many Latinos are devout Catholics who feel that Democrats are increasingly hostile to anybody who is pro-life. Most Americans are in the moderate middle and want to see choice protected during early pregnancy.

So whatever happened to legal, safe and rare? If we Democrats don’t want to lose both the House and Senate in November, we must rethink and reframe our talking points on this divisive issue.

KEVIN CONWAY

Santa Rosa

Awash in guns

EDITOR: The one thing that all perpetrators of gun violence have in common is access to guns, and America is awash in them. If the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is the best that Congress can deliver, we might as well add gun violence to the other certainties of American life — death and taxes. Don’t let your member of Congress use this new law as an excuse to rest on their laurels. Americans deserve to be safe when they go to school, walk down the street, shop at a grocery store or attend a Fourth of July parade.

KURT DUNPHY

Santa Rosa

Tennebaum’s complaint

EDITOR: Now that the dust has settled on the sheriff’s election, an issue that arose during the campaign needs examination. Candidate Carl Tennenbaum filed a complaint claiming deputy sheriffs were using union release time to campaign for candidate Eddie Engram. If true, this is a corrupt practice.

Union release time is county-paid time used for conducting union business, including negotiations, meet and confer, and training. As a union representative for SEIU, I applied for release time many times. Later, as a county manager, I reviewed and approved release time for my staff. Electioneering for a political candidate was not and is not an approved use of release time.

If Tennenbaum is correct, county taxpayers essentially paid for employees to campaign on county time. I believe this would violate state and federal law and does not appear as an approved use in any county labor agreement.

It is entirely unethical and unfair to make taxpayers fund one side of an election campaign. This is not an auspicious way to begin Engram’s term in office.

ELDEN McFARLAND

Healdsburg

The view from Texas

EDITOR: This is a response to Gary Looney’s July 7 letter about Texas (“Good riddance, California”). No state income tax? True, and that is why Texas ranks 35th in the nation for education and 42nd for health care.

Open legal carry firearms? Indeed, and violence costs Texans $16 billion a year; perhaps that’s why education is so poorly funded. Texas also has eight of the most dangerous cities in America. Yes, it frequently uses capital punishment, contributing to America’s being ranked with China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia for capital punishment.

Yes, Texas has a lower cost of living. And with a $31,000 average income, this may explain why Texas is ranked No. 1 for child food insecurity and fourth for homelessness.

Texas is the Lone Star State because it had only one star — Janice Joplin raised in Port Arthur.

DAVE HEVENTHAL

Windsor

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.