Thanks for your coverage of the critical shortage of affordable housing ("Mayor has new housing help plan" Aug. 22) in the West Seattle Herald.

The paper was remiss in not including mention of the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association in the article. Since 2000, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association has purchased and built over 150 units of affordable housing to ensure that our lower-income neighbors can remain in our community as prices skyrocket.

More than just housing, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association's projects are the right scale for community and have also brought library, arts, and social service facilities to the community improving quality of life as well as providing housing.

Tackling the affordable housing problem will require local community support of organizations like Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association as well as additional funding from local, state and federal governments.

My opinion is that the mayor's revamp of the tax-exemption program is not a strategy for creating affordable housing. The units supported by the tax-exemption program could be priced higher than anything currently for rent in our community and higher priced than most Seattleites can afford. Private-sector developers in this hot real-estate market have had unprecedented opportunity for profit making.

Government policies as well as the underlying values of our throwaway culture support demolition and building new, bigger buildings. This includes tearing down affordable apartments to build bigger, more expensive buildings. The mayor's tax-exemption program falls into this same category. The nonprofit housing organizations and financing systems exist to build high-quality housing that is truly affordable and affordable over the long term (not just 12 years as the mayor's program proposes).

More attention needs to be put toward increasing opportunities for the nonprofit sector to do their work. We don't need additional incentives for private-sector developers that don't now or in the long term, seriously address the issue of affordability.

Paul Fischburg

Founder and former Executive Director

Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association