Mailbag: Mayor’s argument on homelessness is baseless

It is helpful for Costa Mesa Mayor Stephen Mensinger to inform the public about what the city is doing about the problem of homelessness (“Commentary: Costa Mesa’s success in addressing homeless is a story worth writing,” Feb. 12). However, his gratuitous slap at his constituents who don’t agree with his right-wing politics is inappropriate and baseless. Blaming unspecified “liberal” policies in Sacramento and Washington for the epidemic of homelessness is utterly without foundation in reality.

The truth is much more complicated. During the Nixon administration, the oil cartels created an artificial shortage of oil. This produced long lines at the gas stations and drove up the retail price of fuel from 38 cents a gallon to 55 cents a gallon. That price inflation worked its way through the economy, wiping out much of the purchasing power of older Americans’ life savings and of working Americans’ wages. Many Americans’ standard of living has never fully recovered.

Meanwhile, a bi-partisan trend toward de-institutionalizing the mentally ill began during the governorship of Edmund G. Brown Sr. and continued during the administration of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. This trend was due in part to exaggerated optimism about new anti-psychotic drugs and the hope that mental patients would responsibly take their medications and be well cared for in private, for-profit, board-and-care homes, paid for by California taxpayers.

Fiscally conservative politicians also favored the release of mental patients into community facilities as a way to cut government expenses. We have seen how successful that was. It has been estimated that about half of the homeless people on our streets are mentally ill or addicted.

Then, during the President Reagan administration in the 1980s, we began seeing homeless people in large numbers. Government employees on their way to work in Washington, D.C., could not avoid seeing them huddled over subway gratings in wintertime, seeking the rising warm air, but nothing was done.

By 1986, the federal government borrowing and tax cuts under Reagan and a Republican Congress increased the federal deficit while price inflation continued to eat away at Americans’ savings while wages stagnated.

Banks were de-regulated in the 1990s during the Clinton administration. During the George W. Bush administration, which had the support of a Republican Congress, banks created a housing “bubble” that drove up rents up while wages remained stagnant, and families were driven into the streets. When the bubble burst, and the banks crashed, millions of hard-working Americans lost their homes and their life savings.

Currently, we have a federal government in paralysis. In the midst of an economic expansion that is generating generous corporate profits, the Republican-controlled Senate and House support tax policies that encourage sending jobs abroad and fiercely resist any proposal to alleviate hunger and homelessness in America’s cities and towns.

As to the California government, it has done little, if anything, to alleviate homelessness. In order to balance the state budget in a lean year, Brown slashed spending on programs to aid the poor and disabled. But that is hardly a “liberal” policy.

It is shameful that Mensinger uses his non-partisan office to try to divide his constituents with a baseless, partisan insult. He ought to apologize in the same pages in which he uttered his insult.

Eleanor Egan

Costa Mesa

*

Political reform is necessary

Councilman Keith Curry, a former mayor, is to be commended regarding his concerns about City Council campaign financing abuses and his efforts toward reforming those abuses (“Commentary: Newport Beach needs political reform,” Feb. 10).

Every resident who cares about Newport Beach should support Councilman Curry in his proposals to prevent campaign spending, non-disclosure and abuse. The best interests of the city of Newport Beach and its residents do not deserve, and will not be well served by, a best City Council that money can buy.

Hall Seely

Newport Beach

*