Batavia affordable housing merits support

Please consider voting "yes" to the Campana Affordable Housing Development in Batavia.

My husband, Marshall Brodien, and I were privileged to own a beautiful home in Eaglebrook in Geneva for 22 years. We fully appreciated the blessing of that home and often remarked how blessed we were to live there.

Marshall and I come from modest backgrounds. When Marshall was a child, his mother sold her blood (yes, that was an acceptable practice back then), washed clothes for the neighbors, and worked in the school kitchen to support him and his brother. Marshall also worked from a very young age to help his family and later supported his mom.

Before we married, I was a single mother with three children, working full time and taking college classes. At one point, my children and I lived in a low-income apartment in Itasca, and my mother grew up in the Jane Addams projects in Chicago. I know what it is to struggle to pay the rent, and I fully realize I can be in that position again someday.

We all can. The only difference between the hardworking people who need affordable housing today and those who don't is good fortune.

Mary Doyle Brodien

Batavia