SOS Should Be Preserved

A community should have no tolerance for hunger, homelessness and untreated illness. But the community should also be able to separate its intolerance of those social ills from the people who suffer them.

Share Our Selves (SOS), a volunteer agency that for years has been providing food, clothing, shelter and medical care for thousands of people in need, knows the difference. Sadly, it is a distinction that a group of west side Costa Mesa residents that did not like the people that SOS attracts has not seen fit to recognize.

The residents view the people that SOS serves as undesirables. It is not that residents are opposed to having the homeless and the hungry helped. They just do not want it done in their neighborhood. So they put pressure on the city to cancel the private charity’s lease at the Rea Community Center.

And the Costa Mesa City Council, instead of setting an example of social responsibility and supporting the volunteerism needed to fill the void caused by cuts in governmental social programs, took the politically expedient path. It voted to cancel the SOS lease.

Only one council member, Mary Hornbuckle, had the compassion, political courage and leadership to support SOS and its work, rather than cater to the approach taken by protesters.

The city did not exactly throw SOS out into the street with the people it helps. But its action at last Monday’s council session giving SOS six months to find another location could result in the same fate.

Even with the help of the city staff, as the council ordered, the chance of finding a new location that SOS can afford in a neighborhood that would be willing to accept the volunteer agency appears to be slim.

SOS is one of the most-used nonprofit aid programs in the county. It serves an estimated 6,000 families, about 20,000 people, many of whom will have no place else to turn for life’s basic necessities if SOS cannot find a new home and is forced to shut down.

The search for a new site should be a diligent one. But if a suitable location cannot be found, the city should reverse its order and allow SOS to remain where it is to provide food, clothing, shelter and medical care for the poor people of Costa Mesa and Orange County whom no one else is helping.