Letter: Devalued real estate is no badge of honor

In the Mailbag section of the Dec. 19 Valley Sun a letter writer extolled the proposed zoning changes slated for La Cañada. I have to assume that said writer does not live in any of the areas affected by those proposed changes. Her next-to-last paragraph read: “The slight, if any, decrease in real estate values should be considered a badge of honor rather than a catastrophe among we who materially have so much.”

She, obviously, is not among those who need to maintain or, with good fortune, even slightly increase every penny of real estate value accrued to our property. I am among that group. And I resent the calm assumption that those of us who reside in the most likely-to-be-affected area should be pleased to sacrifice our dreams of continued home ownership to those unknowns who are not yet members of our community — and who may never be such. Perhaps the writer would like to offer up her property and that of some of her close neighbors to a place on the rezoning altar in lieu of we who are not so anxious to be recipients of that “badge of honor.”

Marjorie Cates
La Cañada Flintridge