Readers React: To solve homelessness in L.A., build and subsidize more rental housing

To the editor: As an L.A. County social worker in the 1970s with a caseload of primarily mentally ill men and women discharged from state institutions, I served clients who lived in apartments and residential hotels that abounded throughout the MacArthur Park, downtown L.A. and skid row areas. (“L.A. Mayor Garcetti rules out, for now, declaring homelessness an emergency,” Nov. 18)

While many could have benefited from permanent supportive housing, the vast majority lived stably in rental housing in the community at-large with periodic monitoring and support. If someone lost their housing, we were able to quickly get them back into housing again at rents they could afford.

The seriously faulty statement that the homelessness crisis demands more permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing of the newly homeless and transitional housing for all those in between is a prescription for the continuing failure on the part of both the city and county of Los Angeles to address the crisis realistically — by ensuring access to affordable rental housing for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.

Tanya Tull, Los Angeles

The writer is president and chief executive of Partnering for Change.

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To the editor: I think the measures being considered to help the homeless omit an important aspect of aid: identifying some of the factors that would help these people leave homelessness behind.

I used to know a man who was homeless in Hawaii for a while. He slept on the beach and stole pineapples for food. One day, some friends of his invited him to spend the weekend with them; he said spending one night on a soft mattress between clean sheets was enough to make him stop sleeping on the beach.

His first job was as a short-order cook for one of the shacks selling food on the beach. When I knew him, he was selling software to used-car salespeople in San Diego.

The city should invite formerly homeless people to tell their potentially motivating stories. Not everyone sleeping on the streets can be satisfied with it.

Marian Bailey, Riverside

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