To the editor: We've been hearing for a while about other cities and states busing homeless people to Los Angeles. More recently, a video has emerged showing Burbank police officers allegedly abandoning a homeless man in North Hollywood, a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles.
Have you ever wondered why there have sometimes been tents around Beverly Hills, while Beverly Hills remains pristine? The answer is intuitive and it is not because homeless people do not want to live in such a beautiful city.
The city of Los Angeles should respond legally and aggressively. We must stop being the dumping ground for homeless people. It's hard enough to handle our part of this crisis without also being responsible for homeless populations elsewhere.
Of course, this source represents only a fraction of our total homeless population, but it indicates why we have not been able to solve this crisis. Every day we manage to get homeless people off the streets of Los Angeles, but more of them end up there. So despite building units, the problem continues to grow.
We need to do an intense audit of the dozens of sources of homelessness, such as job loss, costly health calamities, evictions, and more. Then we must figure out how to address each source and get to the point where we are at least surpassing the number of new homeless people on our streets. Otherwise, we will continue to dig a deeper hole.
Paul Koretz, Los Angeles
The writer is a former member of the Los Angeles City Council.
..
To the editor: Video of Burbank police officers allegedly abandoning a homeless man outside Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian's field office in North Hollywood isn't a big surprise to those who live in northeast Los Angeles. .
It's well known here that smaller cities on our borders have been routinely dumping homeless people in Northeast Los Angeles for years, but it hasn't been caught on camera like in this recent incident.
Now is the time for us all to have an open debate about our homeless strategies, which are obviously not working. Instead of cities firing people from other places and pointing fingers, we should all hold Los Angeles County accountable for this worsening crisis.
If there was any government entity that homeless people should be thrown into, it would be the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, whose members have failed us all.
Ken Walsh, Los Angeles
