Tip-toeing through homeless issue

Editor, OBSERVER

The May 10 article in the OBSERVER headlined “Destitute man vexes city officials” and its critique in the May 20 opinion piece “‘Callous’ council not serving city” has proven the divisiveness of the homelessness issue.

Unlike the writer, I am not a native to Chautauqua County, but have spent several years of my life living in Los Angeles, where the homeless problem has become a city-wide epidemic. Though I am no expert, my experience in a city struggling to deal with an enormous homeless population is this: the homeless problem is one that needs to be met head-on.

When one vagrant is permitted to live on a street, it is only a matter of time before entire blocks of sidewalks are cannibalized by tent cities, and criminality inevitably follows. No city on earth can weather the scars these homeless encampments leave on a community. Drug use and casual violence is synonymous with large homeless populations.

We are asked to show our Christian virtue of empathy for this vagrant, but no ounce of empathy is spared for the parents who will no longer comfortably let their children out, or the women who will no longer safely go for a walk in her own city because of the danger unchecked homelessness poses. The question of the destitute man’s mental health is also very telling. The truth that America’s homeless population overwhelmingly suffers from mental disorders is undeniable, but likewise the truth that the homeless population is much more criminal and dangerous is undeniable. Any comparison made between the mentally unwell and the physically unwell is denying this reality.

I would never suggest that we should be heartless in our treatment of those in dire straits, but we have to be firm-handed in our opposition to Dunkirk, and every city in our county, becoming open-air slums.

CHUCK CARROLL,

Fredonia