Mailbag: Learn the truth about housing for the homeless
Everything I know from my 40 years as a Laguna resident and as a Friendship Shelter board member for more than 15 years was confirmed Sunday night by an episode of “60 Minutes.”
Anderson Cooper’s piece shows dozens of communities in this country providing housing for their most vulnerable homeless people. It is a startling fact that it is more expensive for a community to walk past a homeless person than it is to provide basic housing for the most needy individual who has been without a home for more than a year.
The most ill and desperate of these individuals will often die on the street without basic housing and medical care.
Please equip yourselves with the facts. There will be a public forum on permanent supportive housing at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club.
The Friendship Shelter is doing everything possible to inform the public of what is being proposed, yet there is so much misinformation out there. Here’s your chance to get it straight from the source that has spent 26 years working in this arena.
The “60 Minutes” segment can be found at https://www.friendsofsupportivehousing.org. I trust anyone who has interest in the homeless issue will consider the information in the CBS program.
Robert Bryson
Laguna Beach
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City needs to improve street safety
The realities of modern urban life — with its fast cars, crowded streets, rumbling trucks, lax policing, etc. — are that serious injury or death are simply the cost of doing business.
Traffic violence is so ubiquitous in Laguna Beach that many of us have been injured in a traffic crash or know someone who has been seriously injured or killed. There are stories in the local papers almost weekly about a horrendous collision.
We need to move forward with the premise that every traffic crash is preventable and that every injury and life lost on the city’s streets is a fundamental civic failure.
Our city must take decisive and sustained action to reduce road fatalities.
Michael Hoag
Laguna Beach
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Time to stop the smoking in wilderness area is now
This letter was also sent to Laguna Beach City Manager John Pietig.
What is it going to take to get the leadership of the city of Laguna Beach to take action?
Since hard evidence is needed to substantiate a claim of malfeasance, I submit a photo to support my assertion that little, if anything, is being done to address the issue of smoking in restricted wilderness areas. These cigarette butts were collected in only three morning visits last week to the Carolyn Wood Knoll at the end of Alta Laguna Boulevard. This … after my bringing the city’s attention to this matter on June 2.
The classic approach to addressing such a matter just won’t do. This is not the time to form a committee, launch a research project, conduct an exploratory study or draft a proposal. The assault on our neighborhood’s well-being is happening now.
Without more being done, it is not a matter of if a wildfire happens, it’s when. This is a time for community leaders to move immediately to a battlefield mindset.
In the absence of more aggressive steps to deal with the matter of smoking in designated wilderness areas, it would seem that the city is opening itself up to a serious liability issue. I submit that the city could be found grossly negligent if it is discovered that all possible forms of deterrent were not employed to ward off a clear and present danger.
I don’t want another devastating wildfire to make my point. More must be done now.
Jerry King
Laguna Beach
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Columnist is wonderful
I’m puzzled by Randy Hunt’s letter regarding Coastline Pilot columnist David Hansen: “Columnist divides Laguna Beach,” Coastline, June 13. I think that Hansen’s columns are refreshing.
He’s a good writer, picks interesting and often unique subjects and I’m not sure what he’s written that can be called “divisive.” The Coastline Pilot and Laguna are lucky to have him.
Bonnie Hano
Laguna Beach