We don’t need more housing; we need fewer people

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, January 17, 2024

I read Sid Roberts’ Herald Forum essay about changes needed to supply housing for the upcoming generations (“We’ll need to be open to options for affordable housing,” The Herald, Jan. 13). I guessed, correctly, that he is into realty. Not to criticize his views of our future needs, but there are other perspectives.

I was born in 1943, in Everett. Grew up here, schooled here, worked here, and will likely die here, I know what the “old” Everett looked like post-World War II, and watched it slowly change and grow to what it is now: Too many people.

Roberts has likely seen the horrors of over-population. The 1940 Everett population was about 32,000, a true Mill Town. Now, we have 110,000. Of course that included annexations, because back then the city limits were at the present country club line on 52nd Street and to the west it ended just on the other side of Forest Park. Highway 99 (a whopping two-laner) handled all of the rush-hour traffic that didn’t exist in those good old days.

While Roberts’ comments address an option for increased housing, they don’t address the declining quality-of-life that over-population brings. The I-5 corridor through Everett wasn’t built until 1966. Expanded numerous times, it’s still not enough. Water supply, sanitation, public services expansions, and mobility will be impacted by all who will fill those dwellings that Roberts seeks to create.

Without population control, people will continue to multiply at exponential rates (and us old folks live longer, too). We all tend to think that things are stable, and we can’t seem to see what lies ahead. You’ve seen the pictures of New York? Is that how you want to live? A person from back East once said, “Quit thinking of your small towns, start thinking of the Borough of Puget Sound.”

As a great cannibal cook might say: “Too many people spoil the broth.”

Ron Larsen

Everett