Dee Morrissette: Affordable housing is critical to growing the Lakes Region workforce

To The Daily Sun,

While I think Scott Everett has done a fantastic job on the opera house, I think it's really awful yet another building which contained affordable housing is being demolished. Those people were ousted on short notice; where are they supposed to go? This is getting out of hand, all these high end condos going up in place of affordable housing. Not just in Lakeport but everywhere. That Barton's Motel, someone could have bought that and made those rooms into nice little studio apartments for people instead of those ugly edifices being erected. The more older buildings that get torn down, the more expensive rents will become in the existing ones. I'm fortunate to still have an affordable place to live in Laconia. I have one of the few left. Not sure for how long, who knows, my building could be the next one to meet the wrecking ball, then I'd be stuck, because there's really nothing affordable anywhere. It seems to me the plan is to make this another high end tourist trap, and the heck with the people who have to try and make a living here. It's going to be bad for these rich people when there's no one left here to fix their car, fix their toilet, fix their boat, repair the roads they drive on, or cook and deliver their food. All those types of jobs don't pay, or just barely pay what it costs to live here. Don't you think that part of the reason businesses around here can't get help is that there's no places left for the working class to live around here? No one is going to want to commute to work at a $12 per hour job in Laconia if they have to live in Concord or Manchester, they will just find work down there. More and more people will continue to do just that if their homes up here keep getting taken away.

Dee Morrissette

Laconia