Submitted by Ruth Bragg
I sincerely believe that the best way to survive the coronavirus pandemic and the economic depression that it is causing is to look to the future and to see this also as an opportunity to make the world a better, more liveable place and at the same time give work to people whose jobs have been disrupted.
One way to do this is to urge our President, Senators, and Representatives to increase funding of public housing. Using the 1930s Civil Conservation Corps as a model, designing and building new public housing and modifying and rebuilding older buildings would employ people with all levels of skills, from architects, construction workers, to clean up crews, even lawyers. The housing could be heated and cooled using clean, alternate forms of energy such as solar panels and be built using materials made from recycled plastic such as the new form of non-wood “lumber”.
I believe that unless the overcrowding that now exists in public housing the coronavirus will never go away. The virus has found a cozy place in which to live, so why should it?
Therefore I hope that Bedford Citizen readers will watch a few documentaries about public housing (The PBS documentary about public housing in Chicago is an old one but one of the best) and then use some of this “shelter in place” time to write to the President and Congress suggesting an increase in funding for public housing.
This could be a silver lining to this terrible cloud of disease and fear we are living under now.
ALSO: According to GOOGLE the US Federal Government spent $1.2 billion (that is not a typo) BILLION on highway trash pickup in 2019, and yet President Trump wanted funds for public housing to be DECREASED. Thankfully Senators belonging to both parties opposed this notion.
Loading ...
