Affordable housing? Not in my yard, say the country club set. Never mind how attractive the design. Never mind that the owners would be responsible citizens: truck drivers, small business proprietors, teachers, health-care workers. If you can't afford cathedral ceilings and four-car garages, "Keep out."
Where attractive and affordable housing exists, in older neighborhoods along shady streets, Moorhead has too often followed a "slash and burn" policy.
For years, owners have improved older houses and expanded small ones (notice the sun rooms and the story-and-a half additions), but Moorhead has favored institutional expansion (for Concordia College, Eventide, Minnesota State University Moorhead) at the expense of affordable housing.
Progress is necessary, but so is balance. Must "affordable housing" mean a huge apartment complex on sun-baked, windswept plains where, without a car, the resident would be as trapped as an occupant of the space station?
Mary A. Pryor
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Moorhead
