Letters: Affordable housing critical to Columbus' future. Voters should support $200M bond

Columbus should invest in affordable housing

Our community can’t afford to leave any tools on the table if we are to solve the regional housing crisis facing us – and our residential tax abatement policy is a key tool to encouraging housing investment and bringing economic diversity to our neighborhoods.

Our continued housing shortage is the greatest threat to housing affordability.

More:Experts: City's 'wonderful magic carpet ride' might end if housing crisis isn't fixed

Tax incentives help accelerate construction of housing units in neighborhoods with access to employment, amenities and services. By encouraging new residential development in strategically selected areas of the city we can bring critical new units to meet the growing demand in our city.

It is also an important tool to create a mixed-income community. Since the City of Columbus updated its residential abatement policy in 2018, more than 1,400 units, 31% of the total units built using the abatement, have been set aside for individuals and families that earn less than our area median income or are in projects that are 100% affordable. Without this tool, these families would have been priced out of high-rent neighborhoods.

More:City proposing $1.5B bond package on Nov. 8 ballot, including $200M toward housing

This is not the only tool we are utilizing.

The City of Columbus made an unprecedented investment in deeply affordable housing when voters approved the $50M affordable housing bond in 2019. This will bring more than 1,300 affordable units to families that need them.

In November, Columbus voters will be asked to continue this investment when a $200 million affordable housing bond is put before them. The City is also using its resources to preserve housing affordability, invest in Black homeownership, support small and mid-size developers and accelerate housing construction.

All of these tools support our goal that no one spends more than 30% of their income to live in the neighborhood of their choice.

We can’t afford to leave any tools on the table to get there.

Erin Prosser, Assistant Director, Housing Strategies, City of Columbus

What's the goal of State Teachers Retirement System bonuses?

Recent publicity focused on bonuses paid to investment staff at the State Teachers Retirement System. Some retired teachers protest that no one should receive bonuses in years when the market is down and investment returns are negative.

The question that should be asked is, “What is the goal?”

More:After losing $3B, STRS pension staff due to get $9.6M bonuses. Retirees say no way.

Is the goal to make retirement system staff share in the pain of retirees who are not receiving annual cost-of-living adjustments?  Or is it to hasten the time when annual adjustments can resume?

According to independent advisers to the State Teachers Retirement System board, the bonuses help to hire and retain the staff necessary to earn returns well above the average of public pension funds.

More:$9.6M in bonus pay awarded after Ohio teachers pension system lost $3B

Retirement system investment assets are roughly $90 billion; the bonuses this year were about $9 million. Keeping the talented investment staff will improve returns far more than the 0.01% that goes to bonuses. Retirees are more likely to come out ahead because of the bonuses.

Canceling the bonuses is much more likely to delay annual cost-of-living adjustments than to speed up their return.

Gerald H. Newsom, Columbus

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The Supreme Court is broken

I sympathize with U.S. Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts.

He now has a radically conservative, ideologically driven Supreme Court. But, there is absolutely no hope that it will be trusted or seen as an evenhanded arbiter. Those days ended with Justice Clarence Thomas wife’s political activities, and his cooperation after Jan. 6 and Mitch McConnell's manipulation of the appointment process.

More:Justice Thomas' lusterless tenure began with a lie. It keeps getting worse. |Opinion

Robert’s silence about both of those means that we need to take his indignation with a little more than a grain of salt. Newt Gingrich broke the House, Donald Trump broke the presidency, but McConnell managed to break both the Senate and the Supreme Court.

It will be years, if not decades, before the court is viewed as a fair branch of the government.

John Heintz, Columbus

The evidence says different

So Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court has “rebutted perceptions of the court as a political institution not much different than Congress or the presidency.”

Unfortunately, the recent overruling by the court of Roe v. Wade stands as evidence contrary to his position.

By overruling Roe, the court reversed 50 years of precedent recognizing a right of privacy for women to decide their medical treatment without governmental interference. Clearly a political act, this unique reversal destroying an individual right is unheard of in the history of the court.

More:Black women share experiences, express concern about impact of abortion ban

In the past, the reversal of established precedent has occurred in order to establish, not destroy, individual rights. The outstanding example is Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which recognized the right to equal educational opportunity by reversing the “separate but equal” rule of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had supported school segregation for 58 years. Brown’s dramatic reversal recognized and supported individual rights. Unlike the Roe reversal, it did not destroy them.

Clearly, the reversal of Roe was the result of the control of the court by a political philosophy rather than the court’s traditional respect and support for individual rights. Roberts’ so-called rebuttal is contrary to the evidence.

Ronald L. Solove, Columbus

Plans for 'Undisputed Way' uninspiring

While the intersection of Broad and High may be Columbus’ most iconic, the corner of Lane and High is its most visible.

That this northern gateway to Ohio State University doesn’t showcase the university’s higher ideals is a lost opportunity.

Currently, two projects from out-of-state developers seek to turn “The Undisputed Way” into architecturally uninspired, high-rent apartment blocks rising up to 15 stories with over 1,600 beds to ostensibly serve a student community able to afford the proposed $1,100 per bed monthly rent.

More:17-story apartment building proposed for Lane and High

Could Columbus, via public-private partnership, emulate Columbus, Indiana, and subsidize design so that architecturally significant structures mark this important intersection?

Could the housing units cater not only to students but to university workers and even neighborhood retirees for a mixed demography characteristic of the adjacent neighborhood? Could some of the units be earmarked affordable?

Could existing historical structures, especially Alhambra Court, be integrated rather than demolished?

Could new building and environmental technologies, developed by OSU faculty and students, be incorporated?

In other words, could “The Undisputed Way” not only tell the story of Ohio State’s greatness on the football field but also its inclusivity and innovation?

Lisa Yashon, Columbus

DeWine overlooking Trump's Proud Boys support

Gov. Mike DeWine recently accepted and thanked former President Donald Trump for his endorsement. He should be reminded that comes with former President Donald Trump's support of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and many other white supremacists.

More:How Mike DeWine should have handled Donald Trump's endorsement | Theodore Decker

I can't overlook that, how about you?

Jim Clark, Marengo

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If government owned LBJ's pants order, it owns secrets

If former President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s phone call to a haberdasher ordering pants for himself is the property of the National Archives, then so are any top-secret classified or unclassified documents and correspondences made by presidents during their terms.

Therefore, any documents, phone calls, memos, letters or musings made by then-President Donald Trump during his one term belong to the United States and not to him, even if they have been torn up and had to be taped back together by aides.

More:Ohio Republicans criticize Mar-a-Lago search, Democrats blast 'political pressure' on FBI

Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.

So, ex-President Trump does not own any of the papers found at Mar-a-Lago. Except maybe his fast-food orders receipts.

And maybe not even those.

John Dirina, Columbus

Developers should be liable for child drownings

I am writing in regard to the spate of child deaths related to drowning. These needless deaths are due to the construction of retention ponds.

More:Father of 9-year-old who drowned in retention pond says a fence may have prevented her death

I am wondering why the developers are not held liable for creating an "attractive nuisance." The developers do not take reasonable care to provide a barrier to something that most assuredly would attract children.

If a homeowner can be liable, why not the developers?

Sherry Riley, Galena

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Letters: Tax incentives help address affordable housing shortage