To the Editor:

Times are bad. Unemployment is at an all time high. Construction workers (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, plasterers, welders) have been out of work for months. The union halls have a very long waiting time for work. I personally know a lot of these unemployed union workers.

I know so many people looking for work but they can only find minimum wage jobs paying $7.25 an hour and that’s only if they can find work. Married people are struggling to keep up with their bills because the wife or husband has lost her or his job. A lot of people are living month to month. Times are bad!

Every time you go into a store to buy groceries, the prices are going up too. And let’s not talk about clothes and shoes.

So Mayor Mark Smith and the city council’s solution to this problem is to abolish rent control. Let your rents go up higher; they don’t care. They live in one and two-family homes. It’s not going to affect them. What were the mayor and city council thinking when they introduced this ordinance? Not about the residents of Bayonne living in rent controlled apartments.

I encourage all Bayonne residents living in rent controlled buildings to attend the city council meeting on March 16 at 7 p.m. and tell the mayor and city council to leave the rent control laws established in 1973 alone. Do not abolish rent control. Times are bad, Mayor Smith. Don’t make them worse.

RICHARD BARBA