Mailbag

In an article Wednesday about the Burbank Collection project nearing a close (“Collection time approaches”), it was stated that the low-end units will start just under $700,000.

Judith Arandes of the Burbank Housing Corp. says in the article that someone would need to make at least $90,000 to afford a unit in the Collection. I don’t know how she arrived at that number, but I’d like to hire her accountant if she really believes that is the case. If she was talking about gross income, you would have to subtract taxes before even getting to the $4,650 mortgage payment, property taxes, homeowners association fees, utilities, etc.

Someone could maybe work that out, but they wouldn’t be able to eat, have a car or wear clothes. Hmmm, conundrum huh?

My husband and I make around that much combined and can barely afford our ever-increasing rent on a tiny two-bedroom apartment. And believe me, we scrimp and save with the best of them.

I have a feeling the housing problems are worse than the Burbank Housing Corp. realizes and, with all of the new high-price condos going up in place of apartments, I don’t see it improving.

Maybe whoever mentioned rent control in a letter recently wasn’t far off. Please base your numbers in the real world, and then offer Burbank residents some real solutions.

SHANNON ROTTINGHAUS

Burbank

House Resolution 106 on recognition of the Armenian Genocide moves now from the Foreign Affairs Committee the full House for a vote. As introduced by Rep. Adam Schiff and a large contingent of co-sponsors, there is a good likelihood of passage. Already we are beginning to see backpedaling by some of these co-sponsors as Turkey makes its case as a strategic partner of the United States in hostile territory. I find it hard to accept just how malleable our moral convictions are when issues about human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide conflict with the Bush administration’s self-declared practicalities of our strategic interests.

For decades, politicians claimed Turkey was too important an ally in our conflict with the Soviet Union, and now Turkey is too important an ally in our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. When will America be in a position to demand Turkish recognition of the human atrocities during the Armenian Genocide?