Dear Editor,

My friend, Sal Giarrantani, laments that neighbors in Jamaica Plain are fighting each other over housing development plans when he wishes they would work together. In the same issue of The Bulletin there is report of another fight over a much-delayed housing project. Developer Mark Kaplan did a commendable job of explaining how complex, time-consuming and costly it is to get any project approved, let alone built.

Some rage that developers are greedily taking advantage of the dire housing shortage when in fact they have about as good a chance of earning a fair profit for their labors as they do at winning in Las Vegas. The working together that is needed is not opposition to more housing but collaboration with the City administration and developers to minimize project costs while adding as much as possible.

Many of us worked hard together to support the City Squares + Streets effort to streamline approval of new development. The effort is beginning to bear fruit: witness the B’Nai B’rith senior housing redevelopment of the Bank of America building and the project at 4487 Washington reported in the same issue of The Bulletin. Costs increase when there are shortages, for which the only real solution is creating more supply. None of us, no matter how long we have lived in a place, have a right to demand that nothing change especially when such resistance only serves to perpetuate the pain others less fortunate experience when an inadequate supply of housing puts them at constant risk of homelessness.

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Alan Wright

Roslindale