Making Room for the Homeless

* Re “Early Check-Out Time” (Jan. 27):

Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses? The city government of Anaheim is sounding more Scrooge-like every day.

The effort on the part of the City Council to limit the number of days a person may reside in a motel is representative of Orange County’s war on the appearance of poverty in our midst, while doing nothing to fight the root causes of poverty.

Never mind that motel living is often the last stop between a secure home and homelessness. Orange County as a whole seems to consider poverty the most heinous of crimes.

Take, for example, a person for whom the struggle for daily bread is relentless. Unable to scrape together enough extra cash to pay the car registration fee, the person is issued a ticket.

Unable to pay the ticket, the car is impounded. Unable to pay the impound fee, the car, often the only asset a poor person has, is then lost. Unable to pay fines for driving without proper registration, the person winds up doing 90 days in county jail.

Meanwhile, the family, struggling to maintain even the most basic lifestyle, hunkers down in a cheap motel, waiting for eviction. It would behoove our city fathers to wage war against poverty rather than against the poor.

LISA COOPER-KEIL

Huntington Beach

* Re “Limiting Motel Stays in Anaheim” (Feb. 6):

As I sat here in my comfortable Orange County condo and read the editorial on Anaheim’s decision to evict the working poor from low-rent hotels, coupled with the continuous bickering regarding the reuse of El Toro, a sadness came over me.

I am a U.S. Marine and have just recently finished working with the base realignment and closure of El Toro and Tustin.

I know there are thousands of empty barracks rooms at El Toro sitting empty now for months. The Irvine Metrolink station just happens to be parallel with the base as well, with service to many places, including Anaheim.

What if our county’s leaders would stop bickering over El Toro for a while and do something good for these hard-working people? They could stay there and the bus shuttle could run them back and forth to the Metrolink station.

It would make me proud as a Marine and future lawyer to see the barracks and other base housing put to some kind of good use.

JAMES E. DAVID

Orange