Priced out of our homes

Priced out of our homes

In the middle of everything that is going wrong in our country, including a pandemic, sky-high unemployment, medical costs going through the roof and more and more retirees living on fixed incomes, now we need to pay more property taxes based on artificially adjusted property evaluations (“Property values up in Kentridge, Fairwood, Panther Lake,” Kent Reporter, July 10).

Much of this is based on the overflow of people coming to our area who cannot pay the exorbitant city of Seattle property costs.

So why not put the burden on people who already live in the South Sound, and who cannot afford to move elsewhere due to stagnant incomes, or living on fixed incomes, or made the mistake of upgrading their homes they may have lived in for years. So let’s make our area the next San Francisco Bay Area and squeeze current residents out of their homes to accommodate those who chose to work in downtown Seattle with hopes of big salaries in the tech bubble and the other businesses that are smothering the quality of life out of our shared futures in the Pacific Northwest.

Meanwhile, what happens to the citizens already here who get priced out of their homes, and as we watch our natural environment pulverized with more and more development.

Elliot Heifetz

Kent