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# Why harp on the homeless?
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/why-harp-on-the-homeless-editor/
- Published: 2002-07-11T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:29:31.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*By Julien Thompson Santa Monica*

Mine was probably the first letter that your paper printed. And I reiterate: Yours is an excellent Santa Monica organ. In a perverse way I also admire an editor who calls Broken Wrist, Nevada, a Podunk town and walks away winning honors in a new city with a new vehicle. Carolyn Sackariason however appears to be unschooled in our homeless problem, at least in today’s inset: “Why Work When you can beg?”

Brittany is an entrepreneur, as the inset shows, verging on the border or criminality. If she makes $18,250 a year (”$50 a day”), I assume she pays the state a federal income tax and is registered and licensed as a panhandler. If not, is the story accurate? Maybe. Sackariason shows the gal’s barefaced ability to lie about her age to have a drink. If she does this in business, it’s called fraud. But Ms. Sackariason has a job for Brittany. Hmmm.

Was Carolyn’s reason to offer the job that none actually existed but our editor knew that Brittany would now show up anyway? Or was it simply because of the old girl network?

I wrote editor Sackariason twice on a job offered in the paper’s ads. Never got an answer. Well, not exactly accurate, I did get “woofed at” by a guy on the computer. Don’t believe he liked homeless either. Is that SMDP’s general sensitivity about homelessness? Probably not. Each of the other times I’ve been cordially received. But Carolyn, the job. Let me have it. I’ll wait for your answer until five o’clock.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 11, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071102.pdf?ref=smdp.com)