Editor,
I recently read in the San Mateo Daily Journal that San Mateo County is already negotiating with the owners of the La Quinta Inn to purchase it for homeless housing. This approach is backwards. The residents of Millbrae through their elected City Council decide what is in the best interests of our city, not some removed county government or county agency whose members do not even live in Millbrae.
A proposal should have been duly noted for Millbrae residents to respond before any efforts were made by the county to go around what the majority of Millbrae residents think about this issue. Similar models to the county’s proposal have failed in San Francisco as numerous homeless do not want housing.
Millbrae cannot afford to lose approximately $600,000 to fund our police, fire department and schools.
I urge Mike Callagy (county executive) and the Board of Supervisors, David Pine, Noelia Corzo, Ray Mueller, Warren Slocum and David Canepa, to put off voting for this and start working with the members of the Millbrae City Council to find an agreeable and fair solution for the citizens of Millbrae.
Julie Forcum
Millbrae
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(5) comments
If it comes to it, I’d recommend dealing with it the American way – threaten to file a lawsuit and if that doesn’t work, file a lawsuit.
Millbrae, this might be helpful. Google "Our Neighborhood Voices". Join them, they are going to be helpful for you perhaps.
The homeless crisis is reflective of a lack of accountability on the part of local and state leadership. Homelessness has become a cottage industry where we mask the problem by using hotels/motels as temporary housing to create the image of action, but w/o addressing with the underlying mental and drug issues which are often at the core. Until we deal with the core issues in a thoughtful and accountable fashion, we are simply moving the problem 'indoors' and not really servicing these individuals in need.
The perpetrators are the homeless advocates who have amassed political capital and can sway elections. This is clear in cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. Even if one leader steps up, and to their credit Breeden and Newsom have tried, some off-the-wall judge steps in, quotes the First Amendment and we are back to zero. Until we clean house, elect responsible leaders and dump corrupt judges, we are stuck with buying ever more motels and applying band aids.
There's too much money in the Homeless Industrial Complex to ever really fix it or shift the paradigm of societal acceptance and abdication of responsibility - both on behalf of the individual and the state. You want to make some real money? Start a nonprofit under the guise of helping the homeless.
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