Your turn on affordable housing

We call this column "Talk Newspaper" for a reason. We're looking for conversation here, because has energy that monologues don't. Conversation more likely to bust loose new thinking on old conflicts. Talk radio sometimes does these conversations well, and if you're willing to write a letter to the editor or respond to these columns online, we'll fire some up right here.

The column generating the most online response so far was "How Much Do We Care About Affordable Housing? (April 19)" I had discovered that the Mail Tribune's archives turned up 1120 stories for the key-phrase "Ashland affordable housing," and wondered what it would take for the walk to start catching up with the talk.

Maybe the first step is more rigorous thinking: how much, in the scheme of things, do we really care about this issue, and why?

I ended the column by asking affordable housing advocates for "your most specific answer to the inelegant question that matters politically: what's in it for all the rest of us?"

Too abstract, said the first reader to respond online.

"The only useful question is what solution can a small, southern oregon town enact to make useful (as opposed to symbolic), affordable housing work? Specifically, who will provide the necessary site, financial, contractual and infrastructure components suitable to ashland? When that question is answered, then we can chat about whether it's worth it."

That seems backwards to me. Do we really want to spend the pile of time and money it would take to answer that important set of questions before we have a hard-nosed conversation about what affordable housing is worth to our community?

I don't think so.

Some of you say the problem isn't houses that cost too much, but jobs that pay too little.

"The market will dictate housing costs, period, end of debate. You must search for ways to raise the bar, not lower it. A better question would be, how will we bring in high paying jobs so working people can afford to buy here?"

Another:

"I agree the city and state governments should be focusing on diversifying the economy by bringing in companies that will pay high enough to afford ashland."

I like the theory. A big boost in family incomes would be a cleaner and sturdier solution than the smartest program of public subsidies that anyone could design. I just don't see how it happens. Jobs with compensation giving entry into the Ashland real estate market — for conversation's sake, let's say $75,000/year — are disappearing fast in a corporate economy that's scouring the globe for the lowest possible labor costs. So as a practical matter what you're really saying to social workers, teachers, firefighters, food service and retail staff "Your hard, maybe important work won't earn you a home here. Quit your whining, find a million-dollar idea, win the Power Ball or live somewhere else."

One reader pushed further with a suggestion:

"Rather than pretend you are making a difference by building sub-market housing for a few people who can't afford the taxes on them, why not give tax credits to industry willing to relocate?"

Once again, the only catch I see is the real world.

Tax goodies for big business, the premier 1980s/1990s tactic for job development, inspired the phrase "race to the bottom" for a reason.

Very few of the communities who've gone down that road are glad they did.

If anyone knows places where this strategy worked as advertised, I'd like to know about them.

This issue stirs up crankiness. One reader says:

"Ashlanders don't really care about affordable housing. That's what talent, phoenix and medford are for. Stop your rhetoric. Talk is just that, noise and feelings, not action."

Ready for crankier still?

"While we ashlanders have this idealistic notion about noble lower class workers and the diversity they'd bring our community, we should all take a field trip up to w. Medford on a warm friday night to get a look at some real affordable housing. Park your luxury hybrid suv near the corner of w 8th and columbus (be sure to lock it!) And go for a little walk to observe tweakers, stoners, drunks, and 28-year-old grandmas in their natural habitat. You want diversity? That's what it looks like."

It's a safe bet more people feel that way, at least in part, than will say so. That's one reason it's hard to get to what a community really wants on an issue like this. So, thanks for the honesty.

Anyone else?

Jeff Golden is the author of As If We Were Grownups, Forest Blood and the new novel Unafraid (with excerpts at www.unafraidthebook.com).