Letters to the editor
Published 1:30 am Friday, March 20, 2026
Housing, racism connected
To the editor:
I’m writing as one of 19 people who spoke at a City Council meeting several years ago to outline why Bainbridge Island needed a Race Equity Advisory Committee. The 17 people of color talked about the racism they had experienced on the island. I gave information on the Government Alliance on Race and Equity as a possible resource, and I don’t remember what the other white person talked about. The council listened, and REAC was formed. But it was not formed, as a writer in last week’s Review stated, to be a “neutral advisor.”
REAC’s mission, per the COBI website, is to create “opportunities…to invest in interrupting racism, bigotry, and prejudice whenever encountered.” The website says that REAC is to “support educational and equitable opportunities and outcomes for the benefit of historically marginalized groups.”
Housing and racism are connected; decades of redlining in our nation prevented Black families from buying houses and accumulating generational wealth. There were racial covenants on this island that prevented homes from being sold to people who were not white, and when a Black friend who had been renting tried to buy a house on the island in the 1990s so that her children could finish high school here, two realtors on the island told her to look for housing in Bremerton.
Helping bring affordable housing to the island fits within the scope of what REAC was created to do, in cooperation with an organization COBI had already signed a contract with.
Marsha Cutting
Bainbridge Island
Short-term renter issues
To the editor:
I feel compelled to write this letter due to the scourge of short-term rentals that have sprung up in my neighborhood over the last few years. My personal residence is on Point Monroe Drive, a neighborhood that used to be quiet with respectful neighbors. But if the people making the noise know they’ll never have to see you again, all considerations go out the window because they’re not your neighbor; they are short-term renters.
Last month, I received two letters from the City of Bainbridge Island informing me that licenses had been issued for two short-term rentals. In this letter, I was assured that the owners of these two properties “look forward to contributing positively to our shared community.”
Using the term “positive contribution” to the shared community is both offensive and insulting to me. The owners of the property next door to my residence live on Mercer Island. This is precisely the type of dynamic that was mentioned in the argument against short-term rentals—wealthy people outsourcing noise and public disturbances to someone else’s neighborhood.
This rental property sleeps eight people, four cars in the driveway. What happens when you place 8 people on a back deck and add alcohol? This is the scenario all summer long and it occurs ten feet from my bedroom window, over and over again, ad nauseam.
Positive contribution? No, it’s simply an ill-conceived business model that has done nothing but fester a groundswell of resentment among my neighbors.
Eric Maisonpierre
Bainbridge Island
This is not back-door lobbying
To the editor:
Opponents of the 625 Winslow Way project tell us they support affordable housing but are just unhappy with ‘the process.’ Their actions betray them.
For example, last week’s letter by Beth Crittenden (‘Back door deal’) cites an email sent by Planning Commissioner Peter Schaab to accuse him of “hijacking” his role to engage in “back-door dealings” to “lobby” for LIHI (the city’s chosen affordable housing provider).
For full context, readers should read the email for themselves: https://tinyurl.com/3he5rkwx
In that email, Commissioner Schaab shares his mockup design for the building, which uses ‘stepbacks’ to reduce its visual massing. Specifically, he proposes removing 3rd & 4th floor units fronting Winslow Way and Olympic Drive, and replacing them with units built up to five stories at the center of the building. His main ask of LIHI is whether such changes would kill the financial viability of the project.
This is not some back-door lobbying; it is a Planning Commissioner doing his homework: Schaab heard neighbors’ concerns about building height and tried to find a solution that wouldn’t kill the project altogether. Crittenden herself describes 625WW as a “mega-project”, yet rather than thanking Schaab for trying to mitigate its visual bulk, she instead accuses him of impropriety.
This is what process concerns look like in practice: distorting the record to impugn the character of a volunteer commissioner trying to make affordable housing work.
Stephen Hoskins
Bainbridge Island
Support 625 Winslow
To the editor:
As the world burns in almost every sense imaginable, some islanders are fixated on opposing the development of affordable housing at 625 Winslow Way.
Unable to drum up opposition to affordable housing on the merits of the project, opponents have resorted to obtaining emails through excessive public records requests, distorting those emails to attack individual city commissioners, staff and even whole committees. Accusations of “compromised process” are weaponized against a project by those who simply don’t like it.
Instead of engaging with manufactured outrage, I encourage community members to support 625 on the merits of the project. Here are just a few:
-More people who work here could live here. 625 would provide 90 homes for individuals and families who earn 50-80% of area median income.
-All units would be affordable, with rules governing affordability for at least 70 years.
-All units would be potentially accessible under ADA guidelines.
-Design concepts include community space and public restrooms.
-Proposed ground floor retail to help enliven Winslow Way east of 305.
-Apartments use less water/energy than single family homes.
-Adding much needed affordable units to help the island comply with state law.
-Location is close to services and transit and is a great place for us to affirm our commitment to being an affordable, accessible, welcoming community!
Learn about the project and find your reason to join City Council in supporting 625!
Bevan Taylor
Bainbridge Island
Appreciate REAC
To the editor:
Bainbridge, our white supremacy is showing, as evidenced by recent public comments, social media posts, and LTEs attacking COBI’s Race Equity Advisory Committee (REAC). REAC has been working within its scope (set and signed off on) by the City Council. Stop with the conspiracy theories and scapegoating. Targeting individual REAC members, your neighbors who volunteer their time and energy to do the arduous and thankless work of “interrupting racism, bigotry, and prejudice whenever encountered” (as stated in REAC’s mission), only serves to point out why our city desperately needs an advisory committee like REAC.
REAC’s thorough and city-sanctioned work revising the Comp Plan’s guiding principles reflects a comprehensive and humanistic vision for this island. A vision that acknowledges the through lines of systemic racism while also elevating the shared values of resource conservation and natural beauty of this place we all share – land which is, lest we forget, stolen. REAC’s draft deserves City Council and island residents’ deep consideration and defense. Thank you, members of REAC and COBI’s Equity and Inclusion Manager, for holding the mantle of racial equity on our behalf and bringing this crucial lens to our city’s processes, plans, and policies. Keep up the good work!
Alice Hunting
Bainbridge Island
