Letter: Suggestions for addressing poverty

Re: “Panel addresses strategies on poverty,” Aug. 9. Here are some of the ideas I presented to the Glendale Housing Authority on July 29:

1. Create a business incubator for the unemployed and those on welfare with an annual 100 participant number.

2. Pay former Glendale City Atty. Scott Howard $50,000 to craft a city law to govern this business incubator approach to diminish both poverty, unemployment, and high spec building and retail store vacancies. He has a superior record of crafty Glendale laws which withstood court changes to the highest judicial levels.

3. Note the U.S. government in the 1920s created an housing program to deal with widespread slums in American cities. This was the beginning of redevelopment and urban development programs to improve deteriorated urban business downtowns.

4. Government officials and others involved in solving unemployment problems and poverty are deficient of ideas, brains, and abilities and waste resources because they don’t have what it takes to get the job done. How many of them walk into any city dead broke, no place to stay, know no one, have no vehicle and get a job in no time and be on their feet within a short period of time?

The challenge is meant to unleash the spirit, pent-up drives, creativity and willpower of those who are poor and unemployed. Give them the tools and means through a novel business incubator program and let Schumpeter’s capitalism’s “creative destruction” process flourish to make the real difference in Glendale and Burbank for poor people.

It can be done. Stop crippling people from becoming their best selves financially and business-wise.

Emzy Veazy III
Burbank