Readers React: By housing homeless people, one church earns its tax exemption

To the editor: Thank you, All Saints Episcopal Church of Highland Park, for opening your sanctuary and allowing homeless people to sleep in your pews. (“Highland Park nonprofit takes the homelessness problem into its own hands,” Dec. 10)

Your generous and thoughtful gesture to the plight of the homeless has given me reason to make you an exception to the distaste I feel toward the tax exempt status of churches (which inexplicably includes the Church of Scientology).

Perhaps your action will prompt other tax-exempt institutions to join in the effort of sheltering our homeless as colder weather approaches.

Diane McDowell, Los Angeles

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To the editor: What great work Recycled Resources has done in helping the homeless here in northeast Los Angeles by finding a church and recruiting volunteers for this project.

Rebecca Prine, Monica Alcaraz, the Rev. W. Clarke Prescott and the volunteers whose names I don’t know have taken the actions our city leaders have failed to take: putting a roof over homeless people. That is the first step in changing lives.

By allowing the homeless to sleep in All Saints Church, the pews are filled in the best way possible. I think Jesus would like that.

Jack Fenn, Montecito Heights

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