Brian Writes A Letter to the Editor

Today was my first communication with The Daily since the crossword war of 2007. I wrote the editor in response to this article in The Daily. Surprisingly it wasn't The Daily I took issue with, it was the landlords off Ann Arbor. They only allow three hundred words but I would have liked to have put in more. Here it is:

I would like to respond to yesterday’s article on the planned apartment building at S. University and S. Forest. It appears that most of the “more than a dozen” people that spoke against it were landlords. Of course they are against it, as long as they can get away with charging exorbitant amounts of money for sub-standard housing why wouldn’t they be?

Why should they care if there is enough demand to fill the proposed apartment complex? All that would equate to is cheaper rent and the more affordable housing they themselves seem to falsely desire. The notion that “The University is not adding 1,400 people to enrollment just so these people can fill up University Village, It will come from rental properties that constitute the neighborhoods stretching down State and Hill and other streets.” What, supply and demand? Competition? By the way, enrollment for Fall07 was up over a thousand students from Fall06. While at the same time no new large-scale housing projects were completed.

Personally from the large number of BMW’s I see around campus and the parents paying $50,000 a year to send their kids to school I think there is a demand for nice housing close to campus.

Last year residents were complaining that students were moving too far south down State Street and now when a practical solution comes along they call it “absurd.” What is absurd is that one of their major concerns is the pizza delivery. Yeah, cancel the project because of the unsolvable pizza delivery problem.

This building would only make Ann Arbor a better place. Perhaps if built, this project would give landlords incentive to improve their properties or stop charging such heinous rent.

Brian Russell
Engineering Junior

P.S. There are 3 pizza places within 2 blocks of the site.