Patti Puts Rise in Homeless at Dad’s Door

Patti Davis blames her father, Ronald Reagan, for the increase in the nation’s homeless population.

Davis, who frequently has been critical of her father’s environmental record, wrote an article for Parade magazine in which she says the homeless problem mushroomed when the Reagan Administration decided to trim “excess” from the budget.

“It took us a while to realize that some of that ‘excess’ translated into human lives, discarded onto the streets,” she wrote.

Davis says she had to change her regular jogging route in Southern California because it went past a settlement of homeless people and she was afraid they would confront her about her father.

“What would I say if I were asked why I didn’t talk to my father . . . about this national tragedy?” she says. “I would have to try to explain that I didn’t know how--how do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America ‘are homeless by choice?’ ”