Letter to the Editor: Councilman Suggs has right concerns, wrong solutions
On the day City Council Member Chris Suggs’ Op-Ed appeared in Neuse News, I received no less than a dozen calls or texts from people upset about his suggestions on what the city should do with our grant money. I told them Mr. Suggs identified the right needs, but he believes in the wrong solutions.
The part Mr. Suggs misses is that the government is the cause of most problems here in Kinston, none more so than the lack of new(er) affordable housing. Kinston is 47th in the State in population, but based on information I learned while serving on the Board of the Kinston Housing Authority, we are top 5 in North Carolina in the total number of public housing units.
No investor is going to build low income housing in Kinston with that much “freeish” housing with which to compete. Most tenants only pay the minimum monthly rent which was $50.00 two years ago.
I am not sure how many people know this, but near the end of my tenure on the KHA Board, we meet with a HUD representative from Washington. During that meeting, we were told that HUD did not like any Housing Authority having buildings older than 60 years in its inventory. We were told that, in the near future, Simon Bright, Richard Green and Mitchell Wooten, which are all close to 80 years old, will not meet HUD’s minimum property standards by 2029 or sooner. This will make all of these buildings ineligible for federal housing aid.
During that meeting, we were told about a new plan that would give every public housing tenant in these developments a Section 8 voucher if we removed these buildings from our inventory. We voted to begin the process of applying for the vouchers and started discussing the best use of the soon to be vacant land. We developed a demolition plan for all three locations. That process must be starting, as I have heard from several people that tenants in Simon Bright are getting notices. Assuming this plan is completed, the need for new affordable housing in Kinston should increase every year until demolition is complete.
Hundreds of people holding Section 8 vouchers in their hand will bring in a flood of developers who now have a chance to compete on a level playing field. In our board meetings, I suggested making the soon to be vacant land available for the developers to purchase. This would increase our tax base by making the land private.
I feel the greatest benefit to the plan is that it gives everyone in these developments the ability to choose where they live. The vouchers are good in 48 states. I believe in giving people the right to choose where they live. No American should be forced to live where they are told. To the person thinking, I only supported this plan because it will profit me. I do not now, nor will I ever again take a Section 8 voucher. I consider profiting from any decision made while I was a board member to be immoral and a severe conflict of interest.
Mr. Suggs is right in that people living in East Kinston are in need of a neighborhood grocery store. Again, he misses the fact that government is here again, the reason one does not exist. Food Lion or Piggly Wiggly would open a store tomorrow if those corporations calculated they could make a profit in East Kinston.
They cannot because the Federal government, by taking away benefits from any low-income person who dares work, ensures that the majority of money spent on groceries in this area will be low profit items available for purchase with food stamps. The solution here is as easy as ending the policy of punishing work and allowing everyone to get a job and/or an education and a job, and still maintain their benefits until they are financially stable.
This policy change would dramatically decrease the need for assistance and give people the right to choose what they feed their families. No American should be told what they can eat. The phrase hand up, not lifelong hand out should be the guiding principle for all government assistance programs. Local government cannot control the Washington bureaucracy, but every local political figure should be fighting for the freedom of its citizens to live where they want and eat what they choose.
Mr. Suggs, local government should almost exclusively limit itself to making sure that we have good streets, low crime, properly trained and equipped police, fire and rescue personnel and cheap, reliable utilities.
I appreciate your efforts, but you have the right concerns, just the wrong solutions.
Anthony Kennedy
Kinston
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in letters to our editor should not be interpreted as the view of Neuse News.
