BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'Ford expands strong mayor powers, pledges cash for housing targets,' published Aug. 21.
Solving the "housing crisis"? First of all, lose the term "crisis."
This lends to a false panic, which results in poor judgment when looking for solutions. So stop!
It is a well-known fact that private health care (as proven throughout the U.S.) doesn't work and causes too many people to go broke, bankrupt, or don't even bother with their meds. There are no/few financial challenges in countries with universal health care.
Universal health care is a single-pay system where everyone contributes and all can benefit from it when they need to use it.
What if we took the solution to the housing "crisis" from the private sector — which is driven by profits — and made the building of "homes" more like the universal health-care system? This would remove the few rich developers out of the system and replace them with contractors who would be paid by the government ... us, the people.
This system works for the health-care sector (mostly) and I can see no reason, in my humble opinion, why this couldn't work with housing. Agreed, there would have to be some serious development go into the system. Smaller, more sensible home design, common methods, and negotiated costs or materials and construction.
Case in point: We wouldn't be having the debacle of the Greenbelt land use decided by rich and influential developers.
We do it for health care, why not housing?
Brian Steeves
East Gwillimbury
