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To the editor:

I am writing in response to the article titled “Planners OK 700 homes,” published in your newspaper on Nov. 22, 2020.

There are a few things mentioned in this article that concern me as a member of this community, starting with Suffolk being a rural area, so building more housing here that people can’t afford to live in will only hurt the community in the long run.

This project is also based on phases. Phase 2 can’t be started until a road is widened near King’s Fork. Roadwork is expensive and with Suffolk being one of the poorest seven cities budget-wise getting to Phase 2 is not as accessible as it should be. There is road work being done now that I don’t see being finished anytime soon. Also, it was stated in the article that over 1,000 jobs were going to be created. What kind of jobs are these? Are they long-term or short-term jobs? Will the community be able to live above the poverty line with these jobs?

Lastly, this area has been rezoned so many times to accommodate the higher income communities such as military families. At a point, socioeconomic diversity is not going to exist in our public-school system. King’s Fork High School and Hillpoint Elementary School are overcrowded, because those areas kept getting rezoned to accommodate certain groups while you have schools that are below capacity. I think more needs to be thought about before this project can get off the ground.

We need to do what’s best for the community not the developer’s pocket.

Noa Banks Greene

Suffolk