Letters to the Editor: The L.A. model for homelessness

To the editor: The rosy impressions expressed by out-of-staters likely reflects envy over our significant funding from Propositions H and HHH. These funds, in part, will pay for immediate transitional shelters under the mayor’s Bridge Home program, but progress has been glacial. Four shelters with a total of 222 beds are in operation after a year of dithering, delay and civic resistance.

Clearly, removing thousands of homeless off the streets requires more realistic scale and swifter action.

Providing group shelters is not a good solution in any case, as significant numbers of homeless prefer their existence on the streets to regulated group shelters.

A move towards humanitarian architecture that provides privacy, security and dignity is the key. Thousands of quickly erected compact modular structures in village layouts appears to be a model worth considering.

William K. Solberg, Los Angeles

To the editor: If L.A. is the solution template for our national homelessness crisis, we are in deep trouble.

How can these homeless advocates in their “well air-conditioned hotel” offer any credible advice? Instead, they should be in our nation’s capital pleading with Congress or in their own cities and states demanding action and funds.

We are at war with ourselves. We are an embarrassment to the world at large and can identify as third world. Woe unto us!

Jerome P. Helman, M.D., Venice