Page One

Other cities should pay for Berkeley’s homeless 

Editor: 

Homelessness is a serious and growing problem. I have sent the following letter to Councilmember Margeret Breland and I urge other concerned citizens to present their ideas to their council-members.  

I have seen a number of articles on actions taken by the city council with regards to the homeless problem in Berkeley, but none of them seem to come to grip with the regional problem. Homeless papers have documented a pervasive trend towards displacing the homeless: San Francisco's "Matrix" program, Albany's removal of the homeless from the Albany landfill, Santa Cruz's sleeping ban, and so on. The point of many of these policies is to get the homeless to move out - preferably out of town, to some other town, like Berkeley. The city of Berkeley has enough problems dealing with its own population; we cannot deal with other citys' problems too. The city council needs to immediately lodge formal protests with each and every city which is failing to properly deal with its own homeless problem. The city council should further request the state to withdraw social services funding from those cities and areas which are flagrantly abrogating their responsibilites, and to redirect those funds to the cities which have continued to try to deal with the problems. I further suggest that city consider direct lawsuits, with a request for penalty amounts to cover the quality of life costs for the housed population in dealing with the influx of homeless people. 

Robert Clear 

Berkeley