By John Zarchen Santa Monica
(This letter was originally addressed to SMDP regular Monday columnist, Charles Springer.) Your column of July 28 in the SMDP is rife with inaccuracies and personal attacks. Let me set you straight on some facts.
Homeless people have urinated on my fence, defecated in my alley and in the park where my children play, have harassed me personally on Lincoln Boulevard numerous times, have trespassed on my property repeatedly and are a constant nuisance in the Ocean Park neighborhood. This is a fact, not rhetoric as you claim.
Check with the Santa Monica Police and you’ll see the number of times my neighbors and I call for assistance when violent homeless people trespass or cause disturbances in our area. Fact, Charles, not fiction.
I am not a “neo-conservative,” I don’t exaggerate the truth and money and power have no bearing on my earlier letter or discussion. You claim I don’t use my head for “anything but a hack rack” and then drone on about unemployment figures and call me “deluded.”
My statements have been about criminal behavior of homeless, not unemployment. You are correct that unemployment figures do not include those who have given up looking and those who are unemployable, but my point has nothing whatsoever to do with unemployment.
You say that gangs are a result of discrimination. May I see your research on this matter? Do you have primary and secondary data to support this thesis? Is this a fact or just your opinion?
You have appointed yourself an authority on facts about gangs and homeless with no credible research to back your claims. You should use your editorial platform for more than opinion if you want respect as a journalist. I suggest you cite a credible study the next time you make sweeping claims about societal ills.
You invite me to “be educated first hand on the life of a homeless person,” adding that I am too “elite to come out on the street and learn first hand what they don’t know.” The fact is that as a youth, I hitchhiked across this great nation and stayed in homeless shelters. I was doing my admissions interviews at colleges and universities and couldn’t afford to fly, drive or take a bus so I used my Yankee ingenuity and used what resources were available to me to better myself. I also worked two jobs through college so I could afford it.
I am not “elite.” You want the elite group to give the homeless “credit for something positive,” citing a 16 percent increase in Santa Monica business (a fact one of your “sources” gave you. Can you substantiate this with any data from the Chamber of Commerce or other credible business organization?) What exactly would the elite credit the homeless with? It seems to me that the government, taxpayers, philanthropists and other concerned Santa Monicans provide the homeless with a great deal: food, clothing, shelter, medicine, job training, refuge, showers and counseling, just to name a few.
What have the homeless provided to those who provide so much to them? Charles, it is admirable that you defend the rights of those who you deem to be defenseless. As I have said a number of times, it is the criminal activity of the homeless that we the taxpayers should not tolerate.
Dialogue is good, name calling and slander is not.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 11, 2003. Read the original PDF.