Opinion: Four-day-a-week restrooms for skid row’s homeless residents is not progress

To the editor: What are we teaching our children when they see how homeless people live? (“L.A. adds more public toilets as homeless crisis grows,” Dec. 5)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and other officials are shown celebrating the opening of a trailer equipped with eight toilets and six showers that will be available for skid row residents to use four days a week, and only during the daytime. That means these toilets and showers will be closed every night and for 24 hours three days a week.

Thus, the new toilets and showers will spend more time closed than open. Where is the humanity in that?

Julie Lie, Long Beach

The writer is a member of the Long Beach Homeless Advisory Committee.

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To the editor: Congratulations, Los Angeles. The additional skid row bathrooms are a needed and wise accommodation to the housing shortage and hepatitis concern.

Anti-poverty activist General Dogon is right: This is not enough. The mayor is also right: It is a very important step and signifies a change in the city’s attitude. Housing continues to be the answer, the goal and the correct humanitarian response.

Bravo, L.A., you have done the right thing.

Robin Doyno, Los Angeles

The writer is a member of the Mar Vista Community Council’s Homeless Solutions Committee.

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To the editor: The new toilet facilities on skid row will be open only four days a week? Human beings can feel nature’s call at any time of any day of the week

If the people on skid row can’t use a toilet, they will urinate and defecate on the street. With increasing droughts and winds predicted for Los Angeles, all people in this city can expect to be affected by the noxious stink of failed public policy.

City officials should find the resources and political will to get people who are homeless into housing now.

Marsha Temple, Los Angeles

The writer is executive director of the nonprofit Integrated Recovery Network.

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