TO THE EDITOR:
As summer arrives in Chapel Hill, those who traverse Franklin Street as part of their daily routines might find it harder than ever to escape the heat.
The removal of trees and their surrounding flower beds was explained by the Town of Chapel Hill in a March press release as part of “spring cleaning,” but it’s hard to see how depriving our town’s main strip of greenery and replacing it with still more brick contributes in any way to the town’s cleanliness — unless, of course, “spring cleaning” was meant to refer not to trees but to people.
The press release also cited the necessity of removing trees with dead limbs and improving lighting downtown. Although I don’t claim to know the true intentions of those responsible for this decision, the effort appears to have nevertheless had the consequence of making life just a little more difficult for those in poverty or without homes, who often used those trees for shade and sat along those walls during the day.
This coincides with the upcoming opening of a new shelter on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Homestead Road, which will in August replace the current shelter on the corner of Rosemary Street and North Columbia Street.
This new facility might be newer and larger, but it is also (in)conveniently removed from the town center, guaranteeing that the town’s poor will remain on the periphery of public consciousness.
Instead of making the lives of the poor more difficult to allay discomfort about the continued existence of poverty in Chapel Hill, the town should emphasize policies that seek to include and assist the less fortunate rather than to make them more invisible than they already are.
Henry Gargan
Class of ’15
