Treat the problem

The text below was prompted by the AV Press article, “End to virus hotel housing for homeless raises worries,” published Monday, June 28.2021. This article explains the plight of a homeless person, temporarily housed in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hotel room.

At the beginning and during the pandemic, homeless people living is close unsanitary condition on the street in many US cities, were offered a temporary hotel room. During the pandemic, there was sever restrictions on travel, thus, many motels hotels were nearly vacant.

Many Cities, including Los Angeles, with the temporary financial help of FEMA rented vacant rooms for the homeless, with services, including food distribution, and medical treatment.

This process worked for a while, however, these temporary services opportunities are ending. In cities all over the country, thousands of homeless people will be on the street again.

Within California, a stop gap is for cities/counties to purchase former under utilized hotels/motels. This proved to be a slow and community unwanted process. Thus, many temporarily housed people will be on the street again.

The long term solution is identify homeless causes and eliminate them. However, the number of causes vary widely. Most causes are: substance abuse, mental illness, loss of income source, eviction from living quarters, gentrification, poor life choices, and a host of alterations of the above.

However, each individual has a specific story. When our politicians realize it is better to treat the causes of homeless, rather than only symptoms, we have a chance to begin reducing the homelessness populations.

Gordon V. Jefferson

Lancaster