Disney Workers Need Place to Live

Reading both your editorial (“Less Time on the Road, Sept. 10) and an article the next day (“Disney Is Casting About for Workers,” Sept. 11) shows that the prospects for traffic become even more challenging as Disney looks for 8,500 new employees for California Adventure. It is especially difficult since wages for these employees will range from $6 to $7.50 per hour (and up to $8.50 an hour at the California Grand Hotel).

Part-timers, young adults living with parents, or those supplementing another income may be able to be housed under these circumstances. But won’t some of these employees be single mothers, welfare-to-work participants or even two-wage families? And where will they live, with the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment over $1,000 per month. (It has been calculated that it would take a salary of $22 per hour, full time, to afford a two-bedroom unit.)

These employees will not, in the main, live in Anaheim. These employees might live in Santa Ana. They may very likely live in Los Angeles County, or the Inland Empire. Oops--there’s that darn traffic again.

Could not Anaheim, which stands to gain much in sales and bed taxes, get together with Disney (which stands to gain much in profits) to provide housing for some of these new employees? After all, Fairview State Hospital, when faced with the problem of where its employees lived many years ago, saw to the construction of housing units on excess land next to the hospital. Can’t that “5-foot mouse with obvious talent” find some way to house the people who will clean up after him?

LEE PODOLAK

Orange