The pending Midlands Housing Alliance (MHA) request for taxpayer funding will be just the tip of the iceberg. The City already annually spends on homeless services more than its total deficit, yet MHA fails to listen to reason. The Canal Side idea was scrapped, because it could injure the financial interests of a major United Way benefactor in Charleston. The winter shelter site was nixed, though the same services could be offered more cheaply and securely there. Instead, this project will serve us up to ridicule, as welcoming guests entering the City on I-126 with two shelters dominating the cityscape, even in the face of the money spent on the North Main Street Corridor, and Main Street itself, and the diminishing in value of the Bull Street property.

Mayor and Council have long welcomed us to live and stay downtown with promises of protection and the need for bolstering the tax base. Has all this come to a screeching halt, because political contributors who largely live outside the city are throwing their money and weight around? Cottontown and Elmwood Park long for the days when our interests were actually represented on Council.

And you’ve been shortsighted. The first time there’s an incident involving Logan Elementary School, or Wardlaw, or one of the child care facilities around the corner, everything will change. MHA won’t even screen for sexual predators.

I hope you can get MHA to see reason.

Steve Fitzer Past president, Cottontown Neighborhood Ass’n.