Homelessness Is a Shared Responsibility

In response to Steve Lopez’s column on Santa Clarita homeless, Dec. 1: Mayor Bob Kellar defended his city’s plan to bus homeless residents to out-of-town shelters, saying that he wants only to balance the needs of Santa Clarita’s homeless with the concerns of merchants and residents and suggested that Lopez “talk to Santa Monica about what can go wrong.” What can and does go wrong is that cities like mine have a much harder time balancing the needs Kellar mentioned (a balance we all strive for) because other cities don’t do their share to address the tragic regional problem of homelessness.

I urge Santa Clarita and other cities in the county to stop depending on the city next door to help your homeless and instead participate in “Bring L.A. Home,” a multi-partner effort to end homelessness in our region in the next 10 years. With an estimated 84,000 people homeless on the streets of L.A. County each night, we can’t do it without you.

Richard Bloom

Mayor, Santa Monica

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Re “For Homeless, a State of Crisis,” Nov. 30: The fact that increasing numbers of homeless families are being forced onto the streets and into the missions of skid row could not be more correct. However, the cause of the problem is not the lack of a coordinated services system when a family becomes homeless, but the simple fact that emergency shelters for families throughout the County of Los Angeles are at full capacity, with long waiting lists to get in. This is a direct result of the suspension of the Section 8 housing subsidy program, which previously helped homeless families out of shelters and into affordable rental housing in residential neighborhoods, where they could then begin the process of rebuilding their lives. Because homeless families cannot move out, the emergency shelter system in Los Angeles is at gridlock and new homeless families cannot get in.

Although I cannot believe that we are allowing this to happen, I predict that in a very short time, hundreds of families with children of all ages (including newborns) will be sleeping on the streets and in the alleyways of one of the wealthiest cities on Earth.

Tanya Tull

President/CEO

Beyond Shelter Inc.

Los Angeles