Letters submitted by BDN readers are verified by BDN Opinion Page staff. Send your letters to letters@bangordailynews.com
Money, misinformation and moral panic. I think these are the real city council winners in Bangor. Bangor has seen a meteoric rise in moneyed interests attempting to influence our city: real estate interests, conservative-funded media, anonymous Facebook pages, and a wealthy, connected Cape Elizabeth citizen. One group alone spent $15,000 on this race.
It’s fair to say that Bangor needs change, but this is not the way. We should prioritize people over property and evidence-based solutions over feelings. In a city where more than half of households rent, and where the city’s own housing study says we lost 2,000 households earning under $75,000 in a decade, citizens should be concerned that real estate interests are able to put their bottom line ahead of our needs.
The problems that Bangor faces today are not isolated. Homelessness, addiction, and the choice between food and medicine are symptoms of a broken system, and they are showing up across the nation. The anonymous pages claiming addicts are pouring in from elsewhere never cite a source; according to MaineHousing, nearly half of the people in our shelters are from Bangor.
We should be looking at solutions that are already working in other towns. Affordable housing works. If allowing real estate and other special interests to run things actually worked, we would be living in a utopia.
It’s time to put people first and invest in policies that will empower our citizens rather than lining landlords’ pockets.
Mitchell Cooper
Bangor