Help for Needy

As a former homeless person who struggles with a borderline mental illness, I would like to comment on Maxene Johnston’s column “Skid Row Streets Are Meaner Today, With a New Breed of Homeless” (Opinion, Aug. 25).

Johnston had some good ideas in her column. However, there are not lots of resources to help the needy as she states. There are some resources and these are decreasing.

I agree that the streets are getting meaner, but so is the rest of society and that includes the business community, family life, neighborhoods, the religious community and the agencies that are supposed to help the less fortunate.

JO ANNE VANDEGRIFT, Los Angeles