Charities That Begin Too Close to Home

Share Our Selves and the media have had a field day with the issue at hand and have created the ultimate drama!

The residents of the west side of Costa Mesa are portrayed as heartless, despicable, vicious, rich, lazy and liars. It’s our human rights at stake, not property values as stated in the unfeeling media.

We asked for the city to find a site to relocate SOS and to pay relocation costs. We have repeatedly said that although many of the poor are disrespectful of property and neighbors, that was not the whole problem. It is the sheer weight of numbers. Five years ago SOS could never have envisioned their unprecedented growth. Then there are the “free riders,” the parolees, addicts and transients who do not want to do anything more than live as they always have.

Never is there a mention that the west side has 90% of all the charity organizations in Costa Mesa in one six-block area. These include SOS, alcohol and drug rehabs, shelters, halfway houses, the soup kitchen and Brother Michael’s, to name but a few. Start adding the numbers and wake up.

In the past three months we have had three murders in this same six-block area, one at a shelter for the needy. Two weeks ago a man was brutally beaten not 15 feet from the SOS medical clinic. No one tried to help, although there were more than 80 people standing around. No doctor came out of the clinic. A neighbor called 911 and attended the victim until the police arrived. A few months ago a man’s nose was nearly sliced off in a fight over drugs while in line for food at SOS. These are the “free riders” we are concerned with.

JANICE DAVIDSON

President, Save Our Neighborhood

Costa Mesa