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# Letter: Charles Springer challenges Bill Bauer's critics to try living homeless
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/bill-bauer-send-comments-to-editor-smdp-com-my-write-here-we-go-again-editor/
- Published: 2007-09-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T02:49:06.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*By Charles Springer Santa Monica*

I see this whole homeless bashing trend is starting again, led by (SMDP columnist) Bill Bauer, as usual. So once again, as I did years ago in my column, I state this challenge to all of you happy homeless bashers. If you have the courage and think it is easy to be homeless, pack what you can in a backpack, leave all your credit cards and money at home and try it for one month. Try to live your life day by day, moment to moment sometimes, looking for a place to sleep or use the bathroom or for food to eat. I don’t think any of you who love to get on this homeless bashing band wagon would survive for one minute, let alone one day. Well, with the collapse of the housing market, some of you might get the chance to see if you can survive. If the real estate market burst doesn’t get you, the raising of rent by those who are trying to milk this market for all it worth might.

Homelessness and poverty are a symptom of the erosion of the middle class in this country due to the outsourcing and in sourcing of the jobs which used to sustain the middle class in the past, the 10-year housing boom, which is now feeling the effects of economic gravity, that has taken away much of the affordable housing across the United States and made homes and rents out of reach for at least 60 to 70 percent of the average American. Add to this the recent price gouging at the gas pump which is causing the price of everything to go up and you will see more and more and more homelessness across the board. It only takes one major economic calamity for anyone of you to become homeless. I wonder how many of you who are reading this letter right now can survive a major medical emergency, or God forbid an earthquake. How many of you live basically check to check? The very thing you complain and whine about is right at the very doorstep for some of you.

As far as OPCC is concerned, all agencies do not run perfectly. I know that they have only built new facilities because they lost the old ones and have not expanded their shelter system beyond what they have always had. Mr. Bauer is out of touch with all reality when it comes to the homeless community as are most of those who responded with a like mind. You see the homeless only when they are drinking or urinating or doing other things you don’t like. But, never when they are hungry or tired or weeping in the night. I lived on these streets for over 10 years, notice is said lived, past tense, and it has forever changed my life. I am now in a Section 8 apartment on Second Street not through the Santa Monica Community Corporation but with a private owner who has not sold out for a buck. With the help of OPCC I am no longer homeless.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 10, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091007.pdf?ref=smdp.com)