To the editor: We’ve long heard about other cities and states busing homeless people to Los Angeles. Most recently, video has emerged showing Burbank police officers allegedly dumping a homeless man in North Hollywood, a neighborhood in the city of L.A.
Ever wonder why at times there have been tents surrounding Beverly Hills, while Beverly Hills itself remains pristine? The answer is intuitive, and it’s not because homeless individuals don’t want to live in a city that is so nice.
The city of Los Angeles should legally and aggressively push back. We must stop being everyone’s dumping ground for homeless people. It is difficult enough to handle our share of this crisis without being responsible for other places’ homeless populations as well.
Of course, this source accounts for only a fraction of our overall homeless population, but it points to why we haven’t been able to solve this crisis. We successfully get people experiencing homelessness off the streets of L.A. every day, but a greater number of them land there. So, despite building units, the problem keeps growing.
We need to do an intense audit of the dozens of sources of homelessness, such as lost jobs, costly health calamities, evictions and more. We then need to figure out how to address each source and get to the point where we are at least outpacing the number of new homeless people on our streets. Otherwise, we will continue digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
Paul Koretz, Los Angeles
The writer is a former member of the L.A. City Council.
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To the editor: The video of Burbank police officers allegedly dumping a homeless man in front of L.A. City Council President Paul Krekorian’s North Hollywood field office is no big surprise to those living in northeast Los Angeles.
It is well known here that the 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 as with this recent incident.
Now is the time for all of us to have an open discussion about our homelessness strategies, which are obviously not working. Instead of cities dumping people elsewhere and pointing fingers, we should all be holding the county of Los Angeles responsible for this worsening crisis.
If there were any government entity that should have homeless people dumped onto it, it would be the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, whose members have failed all of us.
Ken Walsh, Los Angeles