Letters to the Editor: Stop blaming nonprofits for Skid Row’s housing woes. We’re doing the actual work
To the editor: The Times’ harmful coverage of nonprofit Skid Row housing providers continued on Jan. 5 with an assertion in one of its newsletters that “on Skid Row, the housing network for L.A.’s neediest all but collapsed.” The newsletter blurb linked to an article with the absurd headline saying that the nonprofits working to house Los Angeles County’s more than 75,000 homeless people are somehow making the problem worse.
That’s a ridiculous assertion and one the article fails to substantiate.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation — one entity singled out in the piece — is thriving. It has purchased more than 15 properties in Los Angeles alone, currently housing more than 1,400 of the city’s neediest low-income people, with more than 500 truly affordable units in the pipeline.
The truth is that Los Angeles city and county governments are falling down on the job and relying on nonprofit organizations to fill in the widening gaps without any substantive support. They then scapegoat the nonprofits instead of taking responsibility for their ineptitude.
The Times needs to stop demonizing the nonprofit organizations doing the hardest work of actually getting people off the streets and into affordable housing.
Betty Doumas-Toto, Northridge
The writer is a policy advocate at Housing Is A Human Right, an initiative of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
