Helping the Poor and Limits on Family Size

Hurray for Jean Berry! She voiced something I have seen and felt for almost 20 years as a volunteer in the Los Angeles City schools, and as a landlord for the past 10 years. I have always been put down by others for voicing this very same opinion which seems to be viewed as unnatural and un-American.

I won’t go into the pain, suffering and neglect I’ve seen in children from families too large for their parents’ income or even the one-parent families who had not planned on being in the situation they now find themselves. No longer does “cheaper by the dozen” or “the more the merrier” seem to apply when it comes to unplanned children.

As a landlord of a small building with two-bedroom, one-bath apartments, I’ve been threatened with legal action (and worse) by those whose applications I’ve rejected because of inadequate sleeping space and toilet facilities for all of their children and pressured by social workers to rent to families of five, six and more because my apartments were all they could afford (Glendale: $550-$600 per month).

I doubt that it was planned but the fact Jean Berry’s letter was published the same day Planned Parenthood ran a full-page advertisement hopefully will lend some credence to our minority who feel that parenthood should be a conscientious responsibility of all and not a whim or accident or religious obligation.

EVA M. WILSON

Los Angeles