Letters: A powerful plan for homelessness?

A powerful plan for homelessness?

Re “Senate offers a powerful plan to fight homelessness” (Editorials, Jan. 5): The editorial board supports a plan to fight homelessness by “providing housing first, and then social workers would offer services including mental health care and drug treatments.”

Last February, at taxpayer expense, several homeless people were relocated to Section 8 rental units across the street from my house. Whenever county service providers would show up, they wouldn’t answer the door. Once the county employees gave up, these residents who paid zero rent would go back to their new daily routine: subrenting use of their showers and sleeping space to other homeless people in exchange for cash to pay for cigarettes and drugs.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Homeless aren’t going anywhere

Re “Senate offers a powerful plan to fight homelessness” (Editorials, Jan. 5): Growing up in Sacramento in the 1940s, my friend and I used to ride our bikes to the American River and fish in the area between Cal State and the railroad trestle. Illegal camping and the homeless were very common in that area. That was 65 years ago.

Not much has changed because of a lack of funding and interest from the city. The result of this is quite evident along the 12th Street corridor. With the new sports events and housing nearby, this has to go. Sacramento might consider Army-like barracks in an appropriate area.

Homeless aren’t entitled to camp

Re “Confronting the complexities of homelessness” (Marcos Breton, Jan. 6): This is a column that doesn’t offer any kind of solution. There will be people who will be offered help and, for whatever reason, decline. This doesn’t give them a right to use public spaces as campgrounds. This rather bizarre sense of entitlement has helped create a class of people who are basically enablers of anti-social behavior.

Homeless protests do serve a purpose

Re “Senate offers a powerful plan to fight homelessness” (Editorials, Jan. 5): I disagree with how you ended your editorial. Protests do have a point and they do serve a purpose. The point of these protests is the camping ban. You may agree or disagree with the ban, but the point is that these people are protesting to raise awareness and to get the ban overturned.

I didn’t appreciate your comment about so-called homeless advocates, either. These people have been taking action for quite some time, including the community dinner protests that started in December 2014. Community dinners have provided hot, organic meals for the homeless in front of City Hall for months. I wouldn’t call that doing nothing.

Human failures led to boy’s death

Re “Boy, 9, mauled to death by dogs” (Page 1A, Jan. 5): This heart-wrenching tragedy is sure to spur emotions and outrage from many people who will want to point the finger at one source to blame for Tyler’s unfortunate life and death. Many will go straight in for the pit bulls and be blind to all the irresponsible decisions by adults – both familial and professional – that put the boy in an unsupervised position.

The sister, I believe, had every good intention of wanting to help Tyler, but did not have the tools to know what responsibility is. She was not even a responsible dog owner. Allowing her dog to be unspayed, keeping two littermates, also presumably not neutered or spayed, unsupervised in a such small space is just asking for trouble, no matter what breed of dog.

This is not the fault of the dogs or of that poor child, but a tragedy of repeated human failures.

Need to rethink pit bulls as pets

Re “Sister in Yuba dog-mauling case: ‘I will never forgive myself’ ” (Page 1A, Jan. 6): I have never met a pit bull owner who does not hasten to assure you that their pit bull is just a lover. So sweet and wouldn’t harm a fly. Yet the only dog maulings I’ve heard about recently always involve a pit bull. Coincidence?

We have to understand that some animals cannot be trusted. Sure, some of them are lovely, but purportedly so was that chimpanzee who ripped that woman’s face off a few years ago. Leaving that child alone with those dogs is a prima-facie case of child endangerment.

This story was originally published January 11, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Letters: A powerful plan for homelessness?."