The Wealth Of Real Estate Corporations Is Not Our Purpose For Being

Umatilla Hill Nieghborhood - Port Townsend
The Wealth Of Real Estate Corporations Is Not Our Purpose For Being
The Wealth Of Real Estate Corporations Is Not Our Purpose For Being
[Guest Writer, Carol Follett, has lived and worked in Bellingham for 35+ years. She loves her home, neighborhood, and community and wants it to be a beautiful place to thrive in for many generations to come.]
Picture this:
Fresh air blows softly in the windows on you from the wide-open sky above as you wind around gently curving two lane roads with interesting and beautifully maintained, "natural" landscapes. When you do get a glimpse of a home tucked back from the road (on streets named Owl Lane or Deer Court) it offers a unique face, no two alike. You probably know many of the people who live there; they are neighbors you visit and who visit you. You pull in from the main, lightly traveled road, along a short drive to the garage, hardly distinguishable from the garden and the house. As you step out, you hear the chirping of birds and maybe the laughter of children playing in the tree encircled yard; any remnant tension from the day disappears as you inhale and exhale the fresh air of home.
This is where the corporate heads of development and investment companies may live – not you.
Now picture this:
You keep your car windows closed to shut out the noise and dusty air as your vehicle inches down crowded streets with high rise buildings blocking the view of the sky; you can feel the weight and crush of your densely populated city. You pass row after row of boxy buildings with token trees struggling to flourish in this unnatural habitat. You pull into your underground parking garage and your eyes try to adjust to the dim light (or you disembark from a noisy and crowded bus) as you make your way to the stairs that lead to your small space, exactly like all the other small spaces in your building, engulfing you, every day, in an unrelieved sameness. You probably do not know many of the people who live there; they are too close to befriend—it is hard enough to get free of the daily sounds they make, heard through your shared walls. You go from the crowded outside to the compressed inside of your space; you cannot breathe a sigh of relief to be home.
This is what the development corporations design for you to live in. And they want you to pay dearly to live in this box!
To me, the GMA (Growth Management Act) stands for Grossly Misaligned Accommodations: misaligned to our healthy need for variation, greenery, and a blend of society and a rest from society.
The "Engage Bellingham,” meeting held on June 4 at Bellingham High School informed the public that we basically have no more zoning laws to protect our neighborhoods. The City of Bellingham gives us a choice between very built and very, very built. They call it high, medium, and low density (low density still means multi-family units). We are not given a choice for single residence neighborhoods. We are told that it is a "done deal;” which makes me think of other incidences when we were told that something was "a done deal." Most recently, the waste metal shredder forced on our neighbors by the bay was not as "done" a deal as implied. And an earlier "done deal," brought forward and backed by much more powerful folks than the shredders, was the attempt to pollute Cherry Point with a coal port.
Between a “rock and a hard place”
As in so many situations today, there is very little discussion of alternatives: we are told we must build up and fill in. If we do not want to do these things, we are accused of taking away farmland, of being selfish and willing to abuse the environment. We are trapped between polarizing arguments. Yet real housing solutions must begin with the idea of healthy, happy homes for communities and children, which is not merely a nice idea to be wedged between the extremes of infill or sprawl.
First, Bellingham is not the only city in Whatcom County, and Whatcom County is not the only county with cities in Washington. All along the I-5 corridor we have small cities that can absorb a little growth at their edges without destroying farmland. Second, we must look to repurposing and improving the use of already built-on land to make decent living spaces, rather than with the current eye to maximize profits for real estate corporations. Third, there is little reason for people to move en mass to our region. If they wish to move here for the beauty we have, it is absurd to destroy it in the process of accommodating them. They cannot want to move here for jobs because we don’t, and are unlikely to, have many that pay decent wages. If there is no reason to move here, what is the need to build?
Social Responsibility
The extinction of zoning laws made possible by the E2SHB 1110 will not help the unhoused. Currently, “As landlords, large corporate rental companies are associated with …. aggressive buying tactics that lock would-be homeowners out of the market.” So, who is actually profiting from replacing single family homes with duplexes and apartments?
Alternatives
One approach to infill is to better utilize existing built spaces. For example, the old Penney’s building downtown has been unused for most of the 35 years I have lived here. This space could become housing with lovely interior landscaping. Ugly spaces along the Guide Meridian could be replaced with charming, varied, single dwellings with shared green spaces.
People and families need and deserve affordable housing. However, we do not need to build on every inch of green space and block the visible sky to provide this. This need is not an excuse to create prison-like housing for children to grow up in.
People do not exist to make real-estate corporations wealthy. That is not our purpose for being. One part of our Constitution that always resonates with me is in the Preamble, it states our right to the pursuit of happiness. We cannot pursue happiness while living in crowded, jail-like conditions. Do not let them convince you that living in and with nature is a luxury; it is a necessity and should be included in our building codes and requirements. Let’s push to make this issue another of Bellingham’s infamous “done deals.”
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