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Letter: Fall River needs to have rent control

Published

4 years ago

on

The future of Fall River won’t be Fall River if the Bostonian real-estate moguls keep buying up our properties and doubling the rent, to where it’s impossible for our people to afford living in the city where they/we were born and raised. How many of you came from working-class families, just scraping by, honestly?

Do you remember your familiar and good landlords who were also neighbors to you and showed care and understanding by recognizing that you, and the rest of their tenants, cared for their spaces, and that they worked hard and needed to eat/ have enough money to move on to own their own properties as well in time?

These real estate opportunists by and large don’t give a damn about how hard you work, how little you see your partners/spouses, family, sons and daughters. They do not care how old or sick you are, or if you are doing it all your own with the world against you. They do not care how clean you keep your home or if you have a long standing of dignity, pride and a neighborly attitude.

They come into our city, to flip and occupy, tossing law abiding people out left and right. They take what’s ours as we have worked for decades ceaselessly for a space we do not even own.

This land is our piece of the world, and belongs to those within who understand our way, our economy, our culture. We are not to be thrown from the place we belong, on the grounds of having too little, when the prices are soaring too high beyond our reach, unstrung by an anchor of just and reasonable charge.

Where will the elderly and common folk go if they can no longer afford the city their families have existed for generations?

Where will the young adults, at last going it alone, go? Will they be forced into cramming in uncomfortable heaps with a bunch of strangers, eating cheap unhealthy diets, because that’s all they can afford and never know what it’s like to have true independence or a breath of freedom being lashed to overworking themselves, fearing for their lives during a pandemic?

Where will the single person and single parent go when jobs are scarce and times are hard, when hardly any trade thinks to train you and demand years of experience all the same? In this precise time, now, more than ever, a time that need be spent with family, because there’s no one to care for them but themselves/yourself, a time where we have not yet been graced with a living wage, we need to fight for our right to live.

More will be homeless because of greed if we do not do something. People will be shoved out into the cold during a pandemic. You’re annoyed by pan handlers now? Just wait until you see the lines if this type of robbery continues. You may find yourself being shoved out as the city turns to utter ruin.

The answer is simple. We must Rent Control Fall River and save the common people, that includes yourselves.

It’s the fair shake we all deserve.

Now is the time to have heart and remember if we don’t do something the outcome will effect all people, regardless of political stance on the right, left and in between. This is about remembering where you come from and who we all are!

Unite and petition to Rent Control our city.

Mark Lomastro

Sign my petition

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11 Comments

  1. Mitzy Skritzy

    November 16, 2020 at 7:37 pm

    How about tax control, insurance control,cost of repairs control i.e. plumbing, electrical, roofing, window replacement etc. This idea is part of a socialist utopian dream. Why not personally implement rent control by purchasing your own property? Can’t afford to, then make larger sacrafices like maybe working more hours, saving more of your own money, pooling together with family or friends to buy a tenement.
    Looking for the government to control your rent, then maybe public housing is for you. You can’t legislate inflation away, from the cost of living.

    • Mark Lomastro

      November 16, 2020 at 8:23 pm

      You talk about tax control when that in itself is a form socialism, so you are just picking and choosing. You are insane if you truly believe that common people do not bust their humps to get by, when the majority is scaping by at a little over $21,000 a year. Not everyone has the resources you do nor the networking, nor family I might add. When you by a home you are asking for an added responsibility so who are you to ask for an easy way out when you already have more? You want to complain about a meager 3000 in tax that can distributed into the monthly mortgage? That’s nothing compared to a rent monthly that almost matches that. The people don’t even have a living wage to work on. Did you believe that the 80s or the 90s was a socialist utopia? How about the 50s and 60s when one person working a mill job could afford a to take care of 3 children a stay at home wife, have a car and supply for utilities and still have money to save. Was that unjust? Is it so hard for you to understand what is fair or are you so damned greedy that you forget your place in the world which is to help your fellow people. This isn’t a hand out, this adjusting an unfair system and keeping greedy people in their place. Its order, it’s protecting the innocent. Remember that, or were you not born among working class people, or even worse were you that in your greed you turn against them?

    • Joey

      January 15, 2021 at 5:47 pm

      Exactly when our taxes aren’t being raised then we wouldn’t have to raise rents!!! When jobs are paying more $$$ like they should be due to cost of living going up! Then we could all be ok but to have rent control would mean more people would lose their homes & in turn renters lose their aparynents!!

  2. Mitzy Skritzy

    November 16, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    I’ve lived in Fall River for all of my 48 years. For all of those 48 years I have lived in apartments twice on 3rd floors once on a second floor and now on the 1st. I have had work since I was 10 years old delivering newspapers. I have lived around thousands of working people in my life. Many of these people worked in Fall River’s famed factories. These people took overtime regularly to make ends meet. Never did I hear a single one request the government freeze their rent. Your generation of whiners complain about a 40 hour work weak but won’t hesitate spending 100 hours on facebook posting ugly selfies. Your mentality is a sickness! Your are not a victim of a greedy landlord but a victim of laziness and ignorance. If you studied what the Federal Reserve has done to the value of our money you might shift your misguided anger to the proper channels. Coming on Fall River reporter and showing your ignorance and assuming that you know my story is a joke. I have never been like you and tried to shift the blame for my failures onto people I don’t even know. My parents were married at 16 years old with a child and I came two years later. My family lived from paycheck to paycheck like 95% of this country. You are not a victim by the hands of anyone but your own! Sorry if you were not born sucking on a silver spoon but neither was I. Your ignorance on the amount of taxes paid by American workers might say you don’t work very much, because if you ask any working person they’d say otherwise. It is the American worker that supports all government through taxation, so for you to dismiss any tax as meager shows your true colors. Enough said; go to work you lazy bum!
    .

  3. Kenneth Masson

    November 17, 2020 at 12:09 pm

    This whole discussion leads to the huge inequities that have been forming in my lifetime and I’m 60 years old. My dad worked his whole life at globe manufacturer working six days and sometimes seven days a week and my mom was a teller and they were able to afford a decent house in Westport. Nowadays if you don’t have a profession or a degree that dream is no longer attainable. Because we’ve become such a selfish society common working people have been blinded to the inequities that have happened over the last 40 years. Hopefully the youth of this country will take it back again from the super rich so that everybody can have a decent standard of life. This deterioration of the middle class started with Reagan and is still going on under 45. It’s amazing how the elite manipulated the middle class into suckers. Keep on consuming that Fox news and this country will keep on deteriorating and it’s infrastructure will collapse and China will become the would leader.

    • Mitzy Skritzy

      November 17, 2020 at 3:08 pm

      The deterioration of the middle class started because the Illuminati class doesn’t appreciate any resistance from the “useless eaters”. It’s easy for those in power to make even the strongest alpha males and females docile. A little fluoride some atrozine add a little bisphenol A and wham the fight is gone. How many of you have any fight left? Stop blaming others for your problems. You don’t get a trophy for working, that’s what your supposed to do. Our ancestors were the one’s who suffered oppression. Because of our forefathers we have the highest standard of living on the planet and if your going to dispute that then to hell with you.

  4. Richard Borden

    November 17, 2020 at 10:48 pm

    Dear Mitzy how many hours a week do you work and what is your estimated yearly income and what do you do for work? Remember this Mitzy, everyone is replacable in the business world so; don’ t get to cocky.

    And Kenneth, it sounds like you’ re just another member of the herd of sheep that the left democratic oppressors have you eating out of thrre hands. Fox news is not out to strip you of your constitutional rights however the democrats are more than willing to dictate how you must live.

    A major contributor to the decline of our country especially in the manufacturing sectors ( Fall Rivers textile industry) is corporate America ( Wall Street greed )has turned their back on the American labor force because they didn’t want to pay a living wage to their employees.Instead our politicians have allowed American built companies to move overseas (China,etc.) in order to exploit the cheap, basically slave labor of these 3rd. world countries. It’s called greed.

    Now, many of these countries have dazzling new cities with modern infrastructure; while over the past 50 years many of our cities and much of Americas infrastructure is crumbling.

    Wake- up, yes it is time to put America and it’s working class citizens first.

    What we’ve all witnessed these past 9 months is a small sample of what’s to come if our elected officials keep ignoring the middle class amd the burdens being placed on them.

  5. Mitzy Skritzy

    November 18, 2020 at 4:38 am

    My work is never finished! I own and operate a business that my wife and I purchased 10 years ago and will be paying for for the next 10 years. This means I will have made 20 years of mortgage payments on my contract. You see Richard life is about making commitments. The bigger the commitment,
    hopefully the bigger the reward. Skills are important as well as timing,”right place right time”. Making big choices is not for everyone, because fear is the choice dujour! Financial insecurity is a reality until it is not. Sometimes choice may play a major role in finacial independance and sometimes catastrophe can rear it’s ugly face. Through hope and perserverance success can become reality. Are you willing to sacrafice anything for success, I am and I do. The working men and women of this country give their souls to make ends meet paying into a system that rewards who? Massachusetts collects and now spends in excess of 40 billion dollars a year in it’s budget. Fall River alone now sees a 300 million dollar yearly budget. Talking infrastructure spending how much of these monies make their way to benefit us benefactors? We have allowed a top heavy system to stifle any fiscal advancement. We have become cogs in the name of Incorporation. No man or woman can keep their dignity when they are reduced to a space on the corporate balance sheet. Politicians offer us the world while they deliver a tax burden that never funds the corporate beast to satisfaction. What amount of government spending will lift everyone to a suitable standard of living while at the same time allowing those who toil away at work to eat the fruits of our labor. Blame China for the fact that America’s corporations must do what is necessary to stay financially solvent as this includes the cheapest labor force available. Inflation is the main motivating force driving innovation in the capitalist utopia. Inflation is created when money is printed to feed and fund debt. Can you or I access limitless cash flows? When more dollars are competing for the same level of resources prices soar,”Inflation”. The value of the currency we toiled for has now dropped to a level where we become poor. Being slaves to the Federal Reserve System has left our Great Country at a most important crossroad. Should the Corporation of The United States of America dissolve and default on it’s nearly 30 trillion dollars in known debt, a burden hoisted upon we the workers? Should we return to a system where the power of printing money belongs to our own treasury? These questions define our destiny, will we be slaves to debt bondage and it’s destructive inflationary spiral or will we awaken to true prosperity and controlling our own financial destiny? Donald Trump while hated universally by the Federal Reserve Masters has been making an effort to remove America from it’s massive debt. NESARA, known as the
    National Economic Security and Recovery Act would have been a possibility under Donald Trump’s leadership, if Joe Biden takes the White House be prepared to have the chains of economic bondage tightened. Joe Biden said from his own decrepit mouth that he will raise our tax burden without question. Be prepared for our standard of living to plummet to levels we have never seen since the Great Depression. Be prepared to pay a lot more for a lot less.

  7. SocialCrusticeCrusader

    November 22, 2020 at 11:07 am

    Fall River needs more millionaires and maybe a few billionaires. Maybe our local legislators can get this passed through. While their at it we can keep prices on opiods, heroin, fentanyl down so those who struggle to pay for them will be in a more equitable position. Let’s start a race to the bottom and chase any productive people left in the city, out. Enough of you social justice crusaders, socialism is a failure and we will never be a socialist country…

  8. Gregg Rutch

    January 15, 2021 at 5:49 pm

    Many studies have shown that rent control leads to less affordable housing. It’s not what people think. It discourages investment and leads to a decline in the housing market over time. If you want to reduce rents then you should promote building more affordable housing. If the supply of housing meets or exceeds the demand then costs will come down.

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