Foster-Care Graduates: Guide Them to Dignity

Re “Crashing Hard Into Adulthood,” Dec. 2: Thank you, Phil Willon, for your investigative report on emancipating foster youth. As a foster parent, I have been advocating that the resources designed for these youths (such as housing, jobs, money and schooling) be actually made available and distributed. At present, there is no central pool of information; there is a lack of coordination among the many agencies involved.

It is important that this “tossed out” group be recognized. They came into the system abandoned and defeated and leave abandoned and defeated by the system. The first step in correcting this vicious cycle is doing what you are doing: exposing it.

Sydelle Greenberg

Los Angeles

Your report struck close to home. In 1996, the USC Neighborhood Outreach program teamed with a local nonprofit group to rehabilitate a large house in North University Park at 2713 Severance St. Our goal was to provide transitional housing and services to recently emancipated foster youth. Many of the resources of USC would have been made available to these young adults.

Local foundations and agencies understood the need, and we were able to raise close to $1 million to rehabilitate the property and retire debt. The Los Angeles Housing Department held the mortgage on the property. Our project failed because the house was designated a contributing historical structure. Even after we had raised the funds to pay off the mortgage and free LAHD from the chain of title, the agency would not allow us to remove an addition at the rear of the structure so that the building could be upgraded and expanded. LAHD had the authority to permit our rehabilitation effort to proceed but refused to waive its discretionary requirements. The house sits vacant and abandoned. It is a product of bureaucratic indifference.

James E. Moore II

Associate Professor of Civil

Engineering and Public

Policy & Management, USC

I hate to think Dubya knew what kind of trouble our child welfare system was in when he decided tax cuts/refunds would be a good idea. This would be too heartless. So, before President Bush decides to approve another tax cut or a budget that diverts funds away from social services, could you do us a favor and send him a copy of your Sunday Report? Inform him of the daily wars that are being fought back home by our youngsters. If he is moved half as much as I was, then there might be hope for this administration yet.

Julie A. Dunlap

Glendale

Sudan’s Role in

Supporting Terrorism

Mansoor Ijaz suggests in “Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize” (Commentary, Dec. 5) that the government of Sudan has long been a willing but rebuffed ally in the war on terrorism and Osama bin Laden in particular. Ijaz’s close relations with the brutal regime in Khartoum and his previous involvement with oil development in the country make him a less than objective observer, and his larger conclusion is belied by a host of facts reported since Sept. 11.

Sudan remains on the State Department’s most recent list of terrorist-sponsoring nations; support for Al Qaeda operatives is specifically noted. The Canadian intelligence service recently prepared a brief indicating that Khartoum agreed to arrange for diplomatic credentials for Bin Laden followers, allowing them unfettered travel around the world. The agreement was struck in 1998 between Bin Laden’s top aide, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Khartoum’s National Islamic Front. And Indian newspapers report the use this year of Sudan’s New Delhi embassy for the recruiting of Al Qaeda operatives. There are many other examples.

How likely is it that such a regime, still clearly complicit in international terrorism, would have offered the sorts of useful intelligence claimed by Ijaz--before or after Sept. 11?

Eric Reeves

Northampton, Mass.