This may be the best Catholic news story on the internet today. It's an old story: Low income housing vs. development with Catholic Charities right in the middle.
Kudos to Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic reporter Ross Courtney. His lede (that's journalism-talk for the first paragraph) captures the issues at the heart of this thorny question:
By ROSS COURTNEY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
PROSSER, Wash. -- Tourism requires workers; so does farming.
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The people of this little city, which relies on both, are wrestling with where those workers will live.
Catholic Charities Housing Services has proposed building a low-income housing complex right next to a crown jewel of Prosser's fast growing wine tourism industry: Vintner's Village, a cluster of about 11 wineries and tasting rooms.
Both sides are talking, and the housing complex is more than a year from construction. But the issue is prompting this image-conscious city, the first in the state to write agritourism zoning laws, to examine its housing needs.
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