LETTER: Throwing money at the homeless won’t work

In her Tuesday column on helping the homeless population, Susan Estrich states that, by dedicating more money, we should be able to solve the homeless problem. She states that roughly $37,000 per person should be enough.

According to recent reports, the city of Los Angeles, where Ms Estrich worked for many years as a professor at USC, spent $412 million on the homeless last year alone. Depending on how many homeless we are talking about — the number is hard to count — but it works out to between $200,000 to $400,000 per person. This should demonstrate that throwing money alone at the problem is not the answer.

I don’t profess to have all the solutions, but I think it’s important to identify the people who truly want help and a hand up from the people who chose to live on the streets so they can do all the drugs they want, society be damned. Concentrate the spending on the people who are willing to put the effort and work in to improve their lives. Some people will surely be left behind, but we have to prioritize to make progress.

Everyone’s story about how they got there will be different, but the way off the streets should be the same: Hard work and responsibility.