facebook-pixel

Letter: When growth threatens to worsen our quality of life, what will be done about it?

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Traffic moves along I-15 in Salt Lake City on Thursday, September 3, 2020.

Understand, as you read this, that I don’t think all business developers are selfish. I know that many of them do a lot of good with the profits they have earned in their lives. But it is quite apparent that there are some business developers who are more concerned about their profits than the good of our communities.

In the past, business developers have promised that bringing new businesses into our state will improve our quality of life. Have those promises been fulfilled? Our public education and law enforcement systems, and other social services are still not properly funded. Affordable housing, even for workers in new businesses, as well as for low income families, is very hard to find. There is concern about how increased housing and climate change will affect available water. Our highways are becoming more and more like Los Angeles’ highways, and the traffic in our canyons is increasing such that there is a debate about how to improve the way more people can access our ski resorts.

There has been a trend of low income families being forced out of their barely affordable homes in low income neighborhoods and mobile home parks which are being replaced by apartment complexes and gated communities which are too expensive and unaffordable for low income households, or young families. Efforts to provide affordable housing have not been very successful.

And even with the increasing negatives, we read about how some major business developers would like to bring even more businesses and their increased numbers of workers into the Wasatch Front. If the profit-motivated business developers have their way, to make room for more businesses and apartment complexes, more low income people will be evicted, more trailer parks will be sold.

At what point will our planning commissions and city and county governments start doing what they need to do to limit growth such that the growth doesn’t continue to worsen the quality of life in our state for so many people?

I don’t understand. Well, maybe I do.

Fred Ash, Sandy

Submit a letter to the editor