In many parts of the world, seniors are considered important and treated with great respect. But, somehow, in the United States, we seem to talk about caring of our older people, but our actions seem to belie our words.
In Seattle, particularly, our politically correct atmosphere decries racially profiling people, and there are loud compaints when it appears that a group is somehow considered suspect when it comes to race.
Not so, however, then it comes to age. Our city seems to give passive support for squeezing out anyone who cannot pay th going rate for housing and other necessities of life.
The story of Alden Mason, Page One of this edition, is a case in point. The 88-year-old retired University of Washington art professor, who still is a prolific painter who sells his art downtown, is being forced to find a new place to live. He is a resident of the Lock Vista Apartments that are on the cusp of becoming a condominium. He has about six months to find another home, and the pickings are very bleak.
The city says it will take $73,000 income a year to buy an average condo, so that is out for Mason. Few places can be found in the range of his current $715 a month studio apartment.
We have said many times that we are quickly becoming a place for the upwardly mobile, wealthy class and less and less available to those who make less than those who make $93,000 a year for a house of $73,000 for a condo in Ballard.
Add seniors to the list of those who will soon be squeezed out of our city, forced to live in wharehousing units, or have to move out of the city to some unfamiliar and impersonal places far from where their roots are.
Do we really want to ghettoize our less afluent, whether they by younger or older? Is this not a form of a classist society that for so many years the United States, and Seattle and Ballard, in particular, rejected?
We hope someone in our city government will take on this growing problem of housing costs for our elderly, for our youth and for those who cannot make the huge salaries needed to exist in our city.
So far, the future looks bleak for these people.
- Jack Mayne
