The following is an open letter to the Lenox Twelve Oaks Homeowners Association (TOHA):
We write to request reconsideration of your demand that the proposed 10-building, 68-unit workforce/mixed income housing complex, Brushwood Farm, neighboring your development in Lenox construct a fence around its 4-acre complex on its 21-acre woodland site.Your attorney has forthrightly stated that you want to be “completely segregated.” While we respect the nakedness of your position and that you have not also asked for separate water fountains and entrances, please know that the demand is contemptible.
We hope that on reflection you will appreciate that the demand should be withdrawn.Maybe the fence is offensive – don’t get me wrong, the fence is absolutely offensive –maybe the fence is offensive because the folks you want to be segregated from will be living in workforce housing. You know, the workforce that educates your grandchildren, secures your streets, extinguishes your fires, prepares your meals, and rushes to your medical aid. Segregating workforce housing in this fashion has been verboten since at least January 1, 1863.
It is concerning, TOHA, that you believe you need protection from the residents of the Brushwood Farm Housing Complex. Ask yourself if your demand would be the same if the proposed housing complex were made up of multimillion-dollar chateaux. Your attorney said that you want to make “sure that people don’t wander over.” Is it that you don’t want any people to wander over or just some people?
If complete privacy was always fundamental to your housing development’s needs, you could have erected a fence at anytime over the last 15 years. If you want to build a fence on your land to keep yourself in rather than keep the Brushwood Farm residents out, that’s your choice. If you want to offend the community by erecting a fence on your land on your dime, only your good conscience can stop you. But that isn’t what you intend. You are insisting that the Pennrose Company erect a fence in order to obtain approval to commence construction of needed workforce housing in Lenox. Making the fence a condition of the Brushwood Farm zoning approval simply won’t fly.
We are having this discussion now because you are using the fence demand as a cudgel as the Pennrose Company seeks Lenox’s approval of the housing complex. By doing so, you are making Pennrose Company and, by extension, Lenox complicit in your segregation efforts. Pennrose Company, with its back against the fence, gave in to the demand as the most expedient path forward to avoid a costly development battle. As a profit-oriented enterprise, Pennrose Company can be forgiven for seeking the course of least resistance. But Lenox must not discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, national origin, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or employment. Viewed in a certain light, asking Lenox to keep its workforce population – but only its workforce population – out of your development has an undeniable taint of discrimination.
You may be dumbfounded by the fierce condemnation leveled against you for the fence request, in no small part because walled housing developments exist across the country, guard gates and all. Security and privacy are not foreign concepts, here in the Berkshires or elsewhere. The discordant notes you hear arise from the unseemly coupling of your fence to keep out a very particular population. Lenox in the 21st century should not emulate Warsaw or Berlin of our recent past. My ancestors know a thing or two about being walled in and it doesn’t end well.
TOHA, why not take a step back and consider if a fence is really necessary. Acres of dense woodland separate you from the proposed Brushwood Farm complex. Perhaps nature has provided all the privacy you need. As Mark Twain said, he wishes he had back all the time he wasted worrying about things that never came to pass. You may have no legitimate concern for your privacy. Or you might like your neighbors and enjoy mingling with the people that you otherwise interact with in myriad ways on a daily basis.
As President Kennedy might have said, “Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Brushwood Farm!” I have a dream that we will one day live in a community where we will not be judged by our employment status but by our contribution to the community. It is for that reason that we stand with the future residents of Brushwood Farm by asking that you withdraw your demand for a fence prior to the Lenox Zoning Board of Approval’s next meeting on August 9, 2023. There is still time to do the right thing.
