Opinion: There’s plenty of affordable housing — if you look outside Los Angeles

To the editor: This article reports on efforts by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to address the city’s housing crisis by instituting a fee on construction that would help pay for building new affordable homes. (“Amid housing crisis, Garcetti’s ‘linkage fee’ proposal remains in limbo,” June 12)

But is there really an “affordable housing” crisis in L.A.?

There is a fixed amount of land and a lot of people with limited means who somehow think they can live somewhere because it’s what they want. If everyone is getting what they want, then I deserve to live in Newport Beach.

There is plenty of affordable housing in Moreno Valley, Riverside and North Dakota, all places where I lived while I was saving the required down payment needed to buy a house in one of the most expensive counties in the U.S.

David Hawkins, Anaheim Hills

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To the editor: How about a linkage fee on the demolition of perfectly good homes that are replaced by bilious, wretchedly excessive mansions, the construction of which is responsible for almost a third of the city’s tree canopy loss and an oppressive contribution to our already epic traffic congestion?

Let the necessary construction proceed.

Sara R. Nichols, Los Angeles

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