It was good to have Ms. Rosenberg from King County Housing Authority (KCHA) acknowledge [May 30 Times/News) that they are going to honor their contractual obligations and vacate the Lora Lake Apartments.

From my recent view of this situation you would hardly know that was their intent. As a Burien council member, I have heard nothing but how Burien is going to be punished because we, along with the Port of Seattle, are insisting that KCHA live up to the agreement that they made seven years ago and signed onto again just two years ago.

She asks if, aside from their contractual obligations, does it make sense to tear down 162 units of housing. She asks this as if it is Burien's fault that there is such a housing crisis.

The real problem with housing is not what Burien is doing but what King County is doing.

Last year in King County, 43,000 new jobs were created while only 13,000 new dwelling units were created. Burien got very few of these new jobs but we did more than our share to provide the affordable housing.

Burien has 82 percent of its rental housing units that meet the 50 percent of median income affordability standard, whereas the Countywide average is only 46 percent. When the county figures out a way to get its number to match Burien's number, then we can talk.

What Burien is trying to create in our Northeast Redevelopment Area (NERA) is a way to get people out from under the impact of airport operations, and at the same time create an area where we can enjoy some of those 43,000 jobs.

For over 10 years this has been our goal, and for the last four years we have had language in our Comprehensive Plan that restricted further residential use in NERA.

We have transformed our relationship with the Port from destructive to cooperative, and to the Port's credit they have forgotten the "history" and been willing to work with us on joint solutions to some of our problems.

Isn't this what the County and even the rest of the region have asked us to do? Yet with the first major decision that we have made on which Burien and the Port can agree, King County wants us to just forget about this cooperation and violate our policies to allow Lora Lake to exist.

Ms. Rosenberg says that the KCHA and the city and Port have been in discussions about Lora Lake since last August, implying that we have been considering keeping Lora Lake since that time.

While it is true that there have been discussions since last August, those discussions have been about the orderly termination of the agreement and about such issues as allowing some of the tenants to overstay their tenancy due to school age children (school is late getting out this year because of last winters wind storm).

I have seen a Port memo dated 3-27-07, which was essentially the minutes of a 3-23-07 meeting between staff of KCHA, the Port, and the City. It outlined the accommodations that had been made by the Port and the City to the requests by KCHA to assure the least painful process for the tenants of Lora Lake.

Five days later, on 3-28-07, KCHA sent a letter to the Port with 24 copies to various public officials at the City, the Port, King County, and federal levels, stating that the KCHA wants to stay permanently-and lacking that alternative wants at least a two-year extension of the existing agreement.

To imply that there has been an ongoing discussion about keeping Lora Lake since last August seems a bit disingenuous in light of this memo.

Finally Ms. Rosenberg says that the Port and the City have no firm plans to redevelop this area. This is just not true. Over the last 10 years, the City and the Port have put together a general plan to redevelop NERA.

(Think for a moment about how difficult this must have been for two parties that were locked in a lawsuit for much of that time.)

NERA is an area of 162 acres and, to be honest, it is not seen by the region as particularly ripe for commercial development. However, if we are to be able to transition people out from under the airplane noise and not have fallow unproductive land (look at the area north of the first runway) as a result, we need to be able to promote NERA as a business park area.

How is it possible for us to tell the Development Community in the region that we are serious about redevelopment if we leave Lora Lake in the middle? The bottom line is that just because we don't know who the final user is going to be, it does not mean that we don't have a plan.

In 2005 we granted KCHA an extension. A reasonable argument can be made for the proposition that granting this extension has already delayed by two years the start of redevelopment in NERA to the benefit of affordable housing and KCHA.

I believe that this was the right decision back then and that the time has come now for the decision to be made to move forward with redevelopment, and that housing of any kind is incompatible with this effort.

Editor's note: Gordon Shaw is a member of the Burien City Council.