by Nathan Kroms Davis and Becca Shaw Glaser March 22, 2022, The Free Press

Becca: Nate, what’s going on in your world? I think there is another cat?

Nate: We did adopt another cat from Pope Memorial (bringing our total to three), but after a month of trying to gently introduce her to our other cats, we found that though she was a bundle of happy energy around humans, she was a bundle of fierce aggression towards other cats, which led to repeated and alarmingly violent scraps, so we sadly gave her back to the shelter. She’s a sweetheart around people, and I’m sure she’ll find a forever home — just one where she’s the only cat. And how are you, Becca?

Becca: I am exhausted all the time, worn out on a level I can’t seem to shake. I’m disillusioned from several years of going hard on local issues that seemed to mostly get nowhere, four years of Trump, two pandemic years, millions of unnecessary deaths. I keep starting to journal about all the things that are upsetting — friends’ children needing crisis intervention, anti-LGBTQ+ bills affecting these children, our friend missing for weeks, war—and the fact that many people seem to only selectively care about wars and refugees from certain countries. And today I found out that my first college boyfriend has just died in a car crash. The sweep of a life, all this grief.

Nate: I was sad to learn about your former boyfriend’s death. I also learned recently of the death of a college friend of mine, which led to a reconnection with another old friend, and also a not-yet-successful attempted reconnection with another. We seem to be at an age when peers start dying of heart attacks in their sleep. There remains something vital and intense about the relationships we established when we were young, I think. The people we knew back then hold in common a secret knowledge of a shared world that no longer exists and cannot be recovered, but that we existed in for a short time. And so these relationships burn brightly when rekindled, at least for me, at least some of the time. Becca, aside from all of our difficulties, what is giving you joy?

Becca: I don’t want to skip over grief to get to joy. That’s a cultural dead end that in the long run causes more suffering. I’m thinking about the collective, clunky, uncomfortable, and sometimes ecstatic process we are going through as we timidly step out of two years of this crushing pandemic. And, yes, we will need joy in order to survive, but we also need to recognize and tenderly attend to the breaks, the losses, the agony. Last week I met someone locally who with only several days’ notice had become homeless, and rents continue to be shocking. What are you doing to make sure renters have more rights, lower rent, or that more landlords take Section 8 payments?

Nate: I’m now working on two sets of ideas related to housing: 1) Lowering zoning barriers that impede the construction of more housing. We’re actually getting somewhere with this, and I feel confident that it’s going to lead to more housing construction in the near future. 2) A scheme to subsidize housing through TIF districts, which as far as I know isn’t being done elsewhere in the state. The idea here is that we (i.e., the city of Rockland) would pay the difference between market rate rent and whatever we consider affordable rent (probably some percentage of area median income) with the proceeds from TIF districts that we would establish whenever a developer wanted to build qualifying housing. This second idea is speculative (and I hope innovative), but I think it could work. It all comes down to the numbers, though.

Becca: Rockland mostly has older housing stuff, so does that apply to the already-established housing? And what happened to the things you were working on with preserving a certain amount of space for supposedly “low-income” or “affordable” apartments in new hotels and buildings? And why doesn’t Rockland have rent control?

Nate: So many questions! We postponed debate on an inclusionary zoning law until May. There is also a group working to establish a regional housing land trust, which I think will be the single best way to create and preserve affordable housing locally. As for rent control, there was a group of people interested in this a while ago, but I haven’t heard much from them since. I’m open to it, but the devil’s in the details. We should probably have a discussion on the topic in City Council. But Becca, Spring is coming! Isn’t that great?

Becca: We need revolutionary transformations, not slow, often-meaningless incrementalism, as we slide off this cliff, but I do appreciate that you’re trying some things. Spring, yes, I’m sorting through my seeds, and looking forward to the snowdrops, crocus, the tulips, the daffodils piercing through the dirt.

Nate is a Rockland City Councilor and gadabout.
Becca wishes everyone comfort, safe shelter and ease.