Letter to the editor: We must do better with housing and teachers

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The cognitive dissonance of how our local real estate representatives and relatively local developers rationalize our skewed and unaffordable housing and rental markets is just plain Grinch.

Just take a look at the numbers – all deed-restrictive and affordable housing units are full and have lengthy waitlists. Market-rate units remain largely vacant. It is the tax code and incentives toward shareholders and private equity that is ruining not only our local communities but globally where anyone wants to live.

How can California, the fourth-largest economy in the world, have school districts that have teacher shortages? The Trump administration’s $100,000 visa fees to teach for – if one is lucky – $60,000 a year because U.S. citizens are not going into teaching since they cannot afford to live on a teacher’s salary? Shame on us.  

We must do better.

Lisa Johnson

Santa Cruz