Opinion | D.C. Housing Authority and landlords can and should do better

It’s unhealthy enterprise to cost $2,467 for residences that ought to price round $850 much less a month. Solely a Scrooge makes gross revenue off the struggling of 30,000 households ready to be housed in D.C. Good enterprise focuses on the betterment of the group, not merely revenue. It’s improper for landlords to hike their rents for vouchers; it’s actually stealing housing from the poor ready for vouchers. Charles Dickens known as out such habits in his “A Christmas Carol.” Marley howls at Scrooge: “Mankind was my enterprise. The widespread welfare was my enterprise; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, have been, all, my enterprise. The dealings of my commerce have been however a drop of water within the complete ocean of my enterprise!”

We want reform of the D.C. Housing Authority and of the enterprise practices of landlords as a result of our dire housing disaster will be solved provided that the enterprise group works with the federal government. It’s all of our enterprise to take care of the poor, not simply the D.C. authorities’s.

Katherine Murphy, Falls Church

Is the USA a creating nation? Two Feb. 19 front-page articles would make one suppose so. In “D.C. overpays landlords by hundreds of thousands to deal with its poorest,” readers discovered that in our nation’s capital, the D.C. Housing Authority, opposite to federal rules, pays above-market charges for residents to dwell in absolute squalor, typically with out electrical energy or water.

“ ‘We will’t belief that we’ll get water’ ” highlighted the abysmal situations of the consuming water in Jackson, Miss. In simply 15 months, the town raised issues 150 occasions in regards to the security of consuming water at church buildings, colleges, hospitals and subdivisions. It seems U.S. residents have extra in widespread with these in creating nations and war-torn Ukraine than we realized.

We will do higher. If we had the will to work collectively and trustworthy leaders all in favour of serving the individuals as an alternative of stroking their egos, we may accomplish a lot.

Bernadette Wagner, Hagerstown, Md.