Mailbag: Politicians are allowing over-development of the Westside

Not enough people voted on Nov. 4.

I got up early three days in a row during the week of May 11 and saw a lot of displaced people on Costa Mesa’s streets.

I witnessed a woman who was wearing layers of clothes walking down Placentia Avenue and rolling a suitcase behind her. I saw several men of various ages wearing hoodies and riding bikes down Victoria Street and Placentia with loaded garbage bags piled onto the backs of their two-wheelers.

Another man was riding a bike attached to a trailer moving down Industrial Way, and another was seeming to transport all his worldly goods down 17th Street. I saw more than a dozen such people each of those three days.

They were all traveling the same streets where Costa Mesa has a tenement housing glut. It was still too early in the day for traffic to be backed up. That always happens in the middle of the day.

It’s time to conduct a study of the occupancy levels of all the high-priced, three-story projects around town. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Most of them have on-site sales offices.

Can Costa Mesa’s sewer system even handle all these pipe connections?

Let the speculation end.

Only with accurate occupancy figures can we know for sure what many of us already believe, that the City Council since 2011 has brought a glut of junk housing into Costa Mesa.

Not enough people voted on Nov. 4.

Greg Thunell

Costa Mesa

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Slow development to save water

Re. “Newport Beach moves to require steeper cuts in water use” (May 13):

If City Council members think households are contributing to the water shortage, they should stop rubber-stamping every plan that developers come up with to pack more dwelling units into Newport Beach. They cannot in good faith tell residents there’s not enough water in the well while inviting thousands more people to drop their buckets in.

Jennifer McDonald

Newport Beach