A Humanitarian Crisis
To the editor:
I applaud K.C. Myers for her heartfelt editorial column “Held Hostage by Slumlords” [March 2, page A2]. She used a word in the second-to-last paragraph that sums up the crisis of affordable housing here on the Lower Cape: “inhumane.”
That’s how I see it, and that’s how I have lived it: The inhumanity of not knowing whether you can afford the basic need of having a roof over one’s head, and all that one will endure to keep it, against all odds. You’ll live with broken plumbing in fear that a repair will increase the rent. You’ll pay whatever the landlord says is the going rent for that dirty, rodent-infested studio — because there is nothing else available.
The housing crisis is a humanitarian crisis. It is affecting more and more people in our communities every year. Until we see it in these terms, it’s not going away.
Where is the outrage?
Kathleen E. Bacon
Wellfleet
No Laughing Matter
To the editor:
Your article “State Review Cites Failures of Leadership” [March 2, front page] reminded me of an annual town meeting years ago at which someone said to me, “The way Wellfleet is run, this town should change its name to Dysfunction Junction.”
This sentence: “In the past 10 years, the DOR reports, Wellfleet has had six town administrators, six assistant town administrators, nine town accountants, and six treasurers,” made me think of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas.”
Except that Wellfleet’s ongoing fiscal woes, along with property tax bills that continue to jet due to tax overrides in the millions approved year after year, are no laughing matter.
Mike Rice
Wellfleet
Let Dogs Be Dogs
To the editor:
The Truro Board of Health is entertaining a bylaw change requiring people to keep their dogs on leash at all times. This would harm a significant number of residents and visitors while providing few benefits.
Anyone who has visited a Truro beach early on a beautiful summer morning immediately understands the benefits of letting dogs off leash. They run, swim, and play with other dogs. It’s where they can be dogs rather than people’s appendages.
More important, it’s where their people gather to start conversations, form friendships, celebrate new children and grandchildren, trade stories and recipes, gossip, vent, laugh, and, sometimes, provide comfort and condolence.
Off-season, dogs and owners roam the nearly empty beaches and trails to exercise and battle cabin fever.
This is not trivial in a very small town with no Starbucks, town square, or other gathering place. Dogs and their owners represent an important, passionate, and powerful constituency.
The existing regulations should be maintained and enforced. Violators should be ticketed and fined. But this is rarely necessary because the intense pressure exerted by other dog owners keeps things in line. In season, almost all owners get their dogs off the beach by 9 a.m. and keep them off until 6 p.m., as the law requires. Owners of aggressive dogs are told — in no uncertain terms — to keep their dogs leashed. Owners who don’t clean up after their dogs are tagged and shunned. It’s not uncommon to see someone with a full poop bag tracking down a negligent owner and handing it to him, saying, “You left something.”
The problems are few and far between. And dogs are part of what makes Truro the kind of place it is.
Stan Bratskeir
Truro
