Letters: Rent control is the best solution to gentrification

State Rep. Will Guzzardi has introduced the right idea — rent control — about battling gentrification. Everyone in a gentrifying area should ask their state representative to co-sponsor it and contact Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

The Editorial Board’s suggestion will not work. Those being displaced are family people, old people and the handicapped who need their cars, and, thus, will not go into the high-density buildings. Research has shown that having big buildings in an urban setting with no parking does not make cheaper rents, just greater profit for developers.

An example is the 99-unit with no parking at Milwaukee and Ashland. It is filled. Businesses are the same, no increase. The already-bad parking in the area is worse. Almost no residents who are being pushed out of Wicker Park are in it.

C.M. Blumenthal, Jefferson Park

Where are the protesters?

Over the weekend, about 25 minutes apart, two beautiful, innocent young girls were shot in the head and are now clinging to life. Police say they were not the intended targets in these incidents. One was playing in an elementary school parking lot and the other was sitting in a car outside a dry cleaner with her family. One wonders: Where are the protesters decrying this violation of human rights?

Christine Craven, Evergreen Park

Send in the Guard

I agree with Trump with sending in the feds, and I hope he means the National Guard.

When Jody Weis was police superintendent, he initiated talking to the gangs. Garry McCarthy ended these dialogues when he took office. In hindsight, this action was a mistake since under McCarthy’s leadership, homicides increased annually setting records.

The National Guard wasn’t called in because Mayor Rahm Emanuel and McCarthy thought they had the answers how to lower the murder rate.

Residents have been dodging bullets daily, residents have been killed sitting in cars and by drive-by shootings, children have been slaughtered on playgrounds because of stray bullets, and children aren’t living a full live as they should.

What else would have to occur before our city leaders believe that the National Guard would help Chicago have a better environment? One more homicide is unacceptable.

M.L. Chin, Lincoln Park

Disregard for fact

According to the Monday’s Sun-Times editorial, Democratic state Rep. Sara Feigenholz thinks she knows better than those who established a 1975 Illinois law that declares that the unborn child is a human being.

Her refusal to acknowledge that an unborn child has a right to life shows a total disregard for scientific fact that a baby is not just a part of the mother’s body while in the womb. The editorial speaks of “safe and legal abortions” without mentioning the unsafe and legal ones. And to say that abortion is a private and personal choice is no different than saying murdering her husband is also a private and personal choice.

Donald Nauyokas, Brighton Park