To the editor:<\/p>\n
As a Lee County resident,\u00a0 I see first hand how the rising costs of housing has impacted the housing sector.<\/p>\n
Retail workers receive a starting salary of $15 to $18 with little purchasing power \u2014\u00a0$600 per week\u00a0with 10% for federal taxes, 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45 % for Medicare. <\/p>\n
This does not provide well for living costs such as groceries, utilities and rent. Many workers struggle to make ends meet, leading to stress and financial hardships.<\/p>\n
The mean range for\u00a0 a house in Lee County is $350,000. This\u00a0is unattainable as many workers work\u00a0for years trying to live to the American dream of home ownership.<\/p>\n
Mortgage\u00a0rates are 6%, there are also, FHA loans at 2.5%, 0 down with VA loans and 5% for RDA (rural development\u00a0loan).<\/p>\n
Legislators\u00a0need to put the middle class first, expand education, and support the \u201cemployee free choice\u201d act to benefit wages and the voices of workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stagnation in wages is the biggest problem as I see it.\u00a0Wages have not been raised and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren fight every day\u00a0 for regular\u00a0people and try to make housing and living affordable.<\/p>\n
Vote, vote, vote in the next election to make your\u00a0future better in 2026 and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kathleen\u00a0Callard<\/p>\n
North Fort Myers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: As a Lee County resident,\u00a0 I see first hand how the rising costs of housing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":{"0":"post-134307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}