Letters to the Editor: California doesn’t know if $20 billion spent on homelessness has worked. Who gets fired?
To the editor: As much an opponent of added bureaucracy as I am, it amazes me that California has not created a new agency whose sole job is to fight homelessness. (“California spent billions on homelessness without tracking if it worked,†April 9)
Instead, some $20 billion has been spent over the last five years with no single point of management and accountability. Instead, we have a mishmash of agencies, all with different views on solutions and with little to show for the money they are spending.
What we have in the way of oversight is a state committee, of whom the membership has little real accountability and little in the way of tracking and validation of effectiveness. No one will lose their job if it doesn’t work; it’s just something they do in their spare time and put on their resumés or in political ads.
My recommendation for director would be a retired general or admiral who has no political aspirations, but is sharp and mean enough to handle the job.
Roger Krenkler, Westlake Village
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To the editor: What perfect timing.
I paid my property taxes last Tuesday. On April 15, I pay my state income taxes.
But The Times reports that the council created to monitor the $20 billion the state has spent on homelessness programs over the last five years doesn’t really know whether some of these programs were effective.
Fire every one of these council members.
Meanwhile, The Times has reported recently on staff shortages in L.A. County juvenile halls and California students sleeping in their cars. Remind me again, why do we pay taxes?
Susan Scheding, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Humanize homelessness.
I was at the Metro station last summer and saw a woman sit on a public bench, fully clothed, and start urinating as she cried. If she was a child, the humane instinct would be to go help her rather than letting her sit in soiled clothes and damage public property.
It angers me seeing how carelessly the state has handled homelessness. The incompetence that comes with not effectively budgeting our most pressing issue is astronomical.
With summer approaching, we all know how uncomfortably hot L.A. can get, something city leaders sitting in air conditioned offices doing anything other than their jobs might not comprehend.
Humanize homelessness. That is someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s spouse, someone’s parent. That is someone.
Until the state fulfills its role, I plead to the humanity in you and urge you to step up.
Priya Khullar, Reseda
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To the editor: The Times has been running articles about how much money is being spent on the effort to end homelessness and points out that the number of unhoused people is still increasing.
Please follow up with articles about how increases in housing prices push people out of the bottom of the rental market and into homelessness.
It seems probable that people are becoming newly unhoused at a rate faster than local governments and nonprofits can create housing — leading to the misconception that the dollars going to address the crisis are being misspent.
Maria Montag, El Segundo
