Dear Mr. Lupoli,

Littleton has always been my home.

I’ve lived here for my entire life, save college, my two-year Peace Corps stint, and a short time down the street in Ayer.

When I think of “home,” I think of the house my parents built, which abuts two hundred twenty acres of conservation land that Littleton owns. My dream is to give this house, and the eight plus acres of land it sits on to the town to be used as a nature center and a writers’ house.

It has a sauna.

That might end up being my legacy, small as it is.

And legacy’s a tricky thing, and it will be for you, too, Mr. Lupoli, because you are about to fundamentally change the very character of Littleton permanently. One person making a sense of “place” forever different—and, for Littleton, that one person is you.

I pass no judgement on this.

Human beings need places to live, places to call home. No American feels good walking anywhere in our great nation and seeing people who clearly do not have a place to live. It’s heartbreaking.

You build housing. This is necessary.

I’m not sure what you and the various boards in town all settled on for number of apartments, but I think it’s just north of a thousand. And that’s a lot of new addresses in a town where we have just over thirty-five hundred now.

You’re about to change my hometown forever, and I’m writing you this open letter in the hopes that in so doing, you’ll change the narrative on our nation’s housing crisis as well.

I’d build housing if I could, but I’m neither good with power tools nor well-capitalized. Safer for all involved that I instead, share an idea with you that I hope you might like.

Sal—I feel like if you’ve read this far, I can address you by first name—Sal, build those thousand apartments in Littleton and sell them at cost.

I’m going to guess that “cost” would be fifty to sixty thousand dollars per apartment.

That’s what we need for housing: equity-building housing that working people can afford.

My twenty-three-year-old son who works full-time can go into a bank and get a mortgage for an apartment that costs him fifty grand. He cannot afford a six-hundred thousand dollar “starter” house. No bank would give him a mortgage to buy a house in the town where he grew up.

But if you sell at cost, he could stay in Littleton.

That’s the missing rung on the ladder.

We need the equity-building housing for the young climbing up. And we need this sort of housing for the throngs of Littleton Boomers who want to stay in town with their friends but they no longer want to shovel snow and rake leaves, or pay exorbitant taxes.

The Commonwealth (dare I say, “the nation”) needs people like you—housing developers—to do this one good deed to end our housing crisis.

You, Mr. Sal Lupoli, could be the one to show them how. Build those thousand apartments here in Littleton and sell them at their true cost to build.

That’s your good deed, Sal.

That’s your legacy.

Plus, Oprah loves this sort of stuff, you know, those wacky stories that start with, “So, Oprah, I got this open letter, and it got me thinking, we could do something really meaningful . . . .”

And, it’d be a great story.

Who doesn’t like a great story?

Think about it, and call me anytime,

Jenna

978.760.0482