Editor:
We need to use the moratorium to have an honest conversation about releasing our community’s antiquated employee housing deed restrictions.
Those deed restrictions constitute, collectively, what is by far the biggest lien in the community, and that lien is attached to real property owned by citizens of modest means.
That multi-billion dollar lien has been around in various forms for about 50 years and is designed to run with the land forever. The fastest way to unclog our real estate market and make more housing available is to release that big fat lien.
At this time, we are locked in a forever real estate class war, where some property owners have a nest egg and some do not; what would town feel like if all property owners had a nest egg?
Our government has hired many planners, but the same kind of thinking that got us into this mess will never get us out of it. The problems facing our community are so daunting that we need to go Old Testament on them (specifically, Leviticus 25: 8-13). We need a fresh start.
Living here in Babylon, we can’t tear up our bank mortgage every 50 years. But we can, as a community, choose to release the big fat lien that has clogged our real estate market and made many property owners second-class citizens.
Let’s declare 2022 a secular Jubilee Year, release the big fat lien, and stop the forever real estate class war. Imagine peace in our community.
Millard Zimet
Aspen
