Featured Letter: The rich get richer

I have sympathy for both the landlord and his tenants who are being asked to vacate illegal units on Cox lane (“Town taking aim at local landlord,” Aug. 7).

Besides being in an unobtrusive spot near the town dump, this little complex provides needed housing for those who can’t afford better and who have no place to relocate. Similar housing exists all over the country, and there is secret illegal housing for workforce labor even here in Southold. The town and landlord should work together to make these units legal before the poor people are evicted.

I know it can be done, if both parties are committed to preserving housing for these residents.

On the other side of the spectrum is the strength and power of the wealthy and well-connected as exemplified by the sale of the Capital One office building in Mattituck (“Former Capital One office building sold,” Aug. 7). One prominent family who owned that property turned an $800,000 profit in two years. How can that be, when they sold it to John Kanas, then-president of North Fork Bank, who then sold the property and the local bank for over $13 billion to Capital One? Later, all the employees who worked in the building, most of whom were local, were laid off. If this isn’t a tale of greed and deception, I don’t know what is.

So, if you think about it, where is the justice in shutting down a small residential complex serving the less fortunate, when those at the top of the socio-economic ladder, in the process of enhancing their wealth, lay off hundreds of employees whose families were dependent on these jobs? Sometimes our society has to find humanitarian solutions to difficult situations, and I know it can be done in our beautiful Town of Southold, which I am so thankful to be living in.

Harry Katz, Southold