Dick Chernisky Letter

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Worcester needs a 10 percent cap on affordable housing. The only exceptions should be affordable homeownership and quality senior housing for ages 61 and older.   We need the 10 percent cap because the overbuilding of affordable housing, and the poverty it generates, is undermining Worcester as a viable place to live, invest and go to school.

Suburban malls with free parking didn’t kill downtown Worcester. Poverty killed downtown. Suburban and Worcester shoppers didn’t drive 20 miles out of their way to avoid a downtown parking fee. They wanted to avoid the vagrants, social misfits, gangs of low-income youth and the stench of urine. Parts of the Galleria smelled like a cesspool.

CitySquare will face the same problems the Galleria faced. Without the 10 percent cap, CitySquare will not be able to give Worcester the upscale downtown it needs for a tax base. Upscale stores and affluent condo owners will not invest in a city that’s filling up with poverty from the Third World.

Poverty is also killing our neighborhoods. I not only see prostitutes walking Main Street, I see people walking June Street who look like they belong at the PIP shelter. The West Side isn’t getting wealthier like it should, it’s getting poorer. This isn’t progress; it’s destruction of a city.

Remember the 10 percent cap is the “silver bullet” that we Worcesterites have been looking for to begin the restoration of our city