Letter: Mayor is doing his best with homeless issue

Friday, May 17, 2002 | 3:49 a.m.

I'm really getting tired of all the holier-than-thou letter writers who keep blaming Mayor Oscar Goodman for the homeless problem. It's easy to find fault and blame someone for a problem, it's harder to come up with a solution. But the mayor is not to blame for the homeless.

In every country in every city of the world there are homeless and poor people. And they create problems of sanitation and crime. You can romanticize it or try to deal with it realistically, which is what our mayor is trying to do.

He's right when he says that the burden shouldn't all fall on the city of Las Vegas. The homeless tend to congregate in places where the weather is warm. Not too many homeless gather in North Dakota. And the more you service them, the more they multiply.

Do we want our politicians to spend our cities' limited resources on people who often reject help? In California, Gov. Gray Davis has passed a new bill to help house the homeless and he is being blasted for it, mercilessly from the Republicans.

But don't blame the mayor. He's doing his best with what he has. You can't ask more of the man than that.

SHIRLEY BRAVERMAN

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