Readers React: Orange County’s treatment of its homeless people is cruel and indefensible
To the editor: I grew up in the city of Orange and these days, I feel almost ashamed to admit it.
Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer’s twisted logic in defending his government’s cruel treatment of homeless people by pointing the finger at the city of Los Angeles and Mayor Eric Garcetti is the height of hypocrisy. It smacks of the specious argument that public assistance makes people lazy and dependent.
I was a teenager when Orange County opened its arms to the refugees from Vietnam known as “boat people.” Seeing some of those refugees and their children angrily declaring that they don’t want the “wrong” kind of people anywhere near them turns my stomach.
It makes me wonder why we’re so anxious to have outsiders “assimilate” if it means they must embrace intolerance.
Bryan Reese, Pasadena
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To the editor: The Bible tells the story of a homeless man named Lazarus, who lay ignored outside the mansion of a respected, wealthy man. When Lazarus died on the street — as more than 1,000 did in L.A. and Orange counties last year — his comfort in the afterlife revealed which of them was the better person.
We see a similar story in Spitzer. He writes, safe in his comfortable home, an op-ed article about the wisdom and compassion he and others like him displayed in destroying the makeshift shelters of the hundreds of people who lived in an encampment along the Santa Ana River because they couldn’t make rent. Few long-term solutions are available to them, except perhaps the arrest Spitzer promises “lawbreakers” who violate anti-camping ordinances.
He writes not far from Garden Grove, where a homeless family of four died in their van last March from carbon monoxide poisoning. When more of those Spitzer has cast aside inevitably succumb to similar fates, it will become clearer who is the true threat to a “peaceful, safe existence” in Southern California.
Brian Ritzi, Los Angeles
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