Homeless Camp

* I want to commend you on your coverage of the “camp” set up outside L.A.’s Central Library (“Homeless in Full View,” Oct. 15). It was an effective, sensitive treatment of a horrifying subject.

You did well to share the story of Donna Bates, “the downtown hostess,” who escorts her two girls to school each day and then proceeds to beg for funds to feed the family. It is shocking that amid our prosperity as a city and as a nation we should be housing our children in cardboard. For those of us who have just escaped the clutches of poverty, Donna’s story rings terribly true. How have we let this happen?

CARYN COULTER

Los Angeles

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Bates, a homeless woman with two children, claims to have been homeless for the past five years. She states that she can’t spare the money or the time to get her daughter’s birth certificates so she can receive help from welfare. Yet she says she manages to panhandle about $20 a day!

It’s because of people and stories like this that I never give money to people on the street when they ask for it. I feel the money I give to charity is better spent helping children in other countries where there may be no state welfare systems their parents can fall back on.

Am I the only one who feels more anger and disbelief than sympathy after having read this story?

VICKY LINN MUNSEY

Long Beach