The community’s future depends on adequate, affordable housing, and the same for child care services. Without both, Wrangell will find it difficult to keep the businesses, jobs, school enrollment and services it has, much less grow.
You could say the same for salmon returns, state and federal funds, a dependable ferry system and better weather, but all of those are outside the community’s control.
Housing and child care are something Wrangell needs to confront, look for answers and even help pay to improve. Both are so basic to the well-being of the community that they justify the use of public funds. Don’t call it a subsidy, call it an investment in keeping the town alive with new families, new energy and maybe reaching a point in the future when “help wanted” signs become less common than street signs.
The fact is new workers are dissuaded from moving here if there is no housing. Parents can’t work — or can’t work as many hours as they want and are needed on the job — if there is no one to care for their children. Child care and housing are not luxuries, they are necessities, same as utilities.
Hopefully, candidates for municipal, state and federal office this year will talk more about the real needs of housing and child care and less about the national political garbage that swirls around social media, less about attacking the other party, and less about how people can have everything they want from government without paying taxes.
It was interesting to read former governor Bill Walker’s interview in last weekend’s Ketchikan Daily News, where he said the biggest issues he is hearing from people on the campaign trail to get his old job back are, yes, you guessed it, affordable housing and child care.
“I haven’t been in a single community that has (not mentioned) affordable housing, and I don’t bring it up,” Walker told the newspaper. “I just say, ‘what (are) the biggest issues?’ … and that’s what it is.”
He went on to connect the dots. “I think our economy is a bit stifled,” Walker said, “because of lack of affordable housing, because you can’t get employees. You can’t do the business that you want to be doing.” In particular, tourism businesses can’t find all the workers they need to rebuild their operations with the return of visitors this summer.
Same for child care, he told the Ketchikan paper, thinking out loud about tax credits to help employers that need help in assisting employees with child care expenses or converting unused spaces for child care services.
“Just sitting back and letting it take care of itself … isn’t quite enough for me,” he said.
Wrangell’s Nicole Hammer had a similar answer last year when she was looking for work. “It’s come to the point where I have to go back to work, but how does one go back to work when there’s no child care around?” Hammer said in an interview with the Sentinel. “It feels like it’s just my problem, but it turns out it’s a problem for multiple families.”
It’s a problem for the community, not just families. And what better time to confront problems than in an election year. It’s time for the candidates to start talking about their ideas.
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