My village is talking about the need for more “affordable housing” to house “key workers”. No definitions are given as to what these are, although affordable will mean government subsidies or government planners approving the building of “affordable houses” where they would not normally give permission normal citizens. “Key workers” are almost always low paid government workers.
How would you suggest I write a rebuttal to this idea in the newspaper, bearing in mind that many if not most of the readers will be sympathetic to these vague notions of “affordable housing” for “key workers”.
You could start by highlighting how “affordable housing” could be detrimental to those readers.
I’m assuming the government plans to use measures like building public housing and/or rent control, both would have the effect of raising accomodation prices for “non-key-workers”.
You may want to work in that ‘affordable’ = SUBSIDIZED - by all the rest of you taxpayers. Doesn’t that knock you DOWN on the ‘affordable’ scale too? BEST of luck on this one - sentiment votes (which costs nothing to do really) while sensibility pays the bills.
Funnily enough I was going to ask a similar question.
Take for example Central London, there is no way a fireman could afford to live there, however as a key worker, they need to - in case of emergencies.
So what is the alternative? Should our important workers i.e. firemen, paramedics, nurses etc live in an area that is miles away from their place of work. Surely it would benefit all of society for these emergency workers to live close to work.
Obviously I don’t think this principle applies to low level non-emergency government workers.
