Readers React: L.A. is bungling its homeless housing bond program. Voters deserve answers

To the editor: The L.A. Times reports on the bungled implementation of the $1.2-billion Proposition HHH bond program for homeless housing in Los Angeles. The article relies heavily on explanations — more accurately, spin — from establishment sources while failing to include comments from homeless people and the organizers working on their behalf.

The article includes quotes from a United Way officer who puts the best face possible on a program that has been mismanaged from day one, a point confirmed by the fact that the “first units won’t be ready until December,” fully three years after Proposition HHH passed in 2016.

The facts speak for themselves: The goal was to build 10,000 new units, but the bond program was meant to fund only 7,000; after accounting for funds set aside for one of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s programs, only $14 million remains; and the HHH construction cost per unit, measured on a square-foot basis, has skyrocketed.

The time is long overdue for transparency and accountability. The city must complete an audit of HHH finances as required by the ballot measure and make it publicly available.

Alan Sutton, Laguna Niguel

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To the editor: So, we can put people on the moon, but we have a hard time putting homeless people into homes. The easy answer for why this is so is that we lack the will — and in this case, it’s the right answer.

Zero-interest loans are a taboo subject, but banks have borrowed from each other at low- or no-interest rates during times of distress, so there is some precedent. Homelessness is a crisis that seems worthy of a similar solution.

Is zero-interest lending better than having the city issue bonds? We will never know, because surely bankers don’t want to talk about this.

Matthew Sparks, Dana Point

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To the editor: I was struck by the handsome small homes in the photograph that was published with this article, with apparently neat front yards. It is the perfect street of lower-middle class homes we so value in Southern California.

And across the street, rising rather threateningly, is the multi-level structure that we are told signifies the arrival of “tomorrow” here. What about zoning ordinances to protect these homeowners from this rising threat?

Barbara Prtizkat, Redondo Beach

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