it's Freezing in Southern California

[JDPriestly]

13. I have been thinking so much about the homeless on these cold days and nights in Los Angeles.

If it is cold here, if it is cold in our house, how in the world are they managing. It is heartbreaking that we have so many homeless. All the more so because I notice signs on a lot of the the low-income apartment buildings that say for rent, first month free. Places are empty and people have no warm place to sleep at night. It is a horrible thing.

I remember years ago when we first came to LA. It was winter, and I took buses from the northeast of the LA to Century City leaving the house at about 5:00 in the morning. I had to change buses on, I think, Spring Street.

Around the bus stop, people were sleeping on the sidewalk -- trying to keep warm. We still, after all these years, have far too many homeless.

There is perhaps a somewhat higher prevalence of mental illness among the homeless, and certainly a higher prevalence of alcoholism (based on my years working on the homeless issue), but there is also a high prevalence of mental illness and alcoholism among people who are not homeless, on people who live with their families or who have qualified for SSI or some other assistance. Homeless people, like the other mentally ill or troubled people, need help with those afflictions, but most of all, they just need a place to live and food.

A few people are homeless because they just feel uncomfortable or afraid when they live within four walls and don't want to sleep inside. But the vast majority of homeless people are homeless BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE, and not for any other reason. It is a shame that we have plenty of housing and still have homeless people.

It must be so cold sleeping on a sidewalk or under a bridge on a windy, cold night like this. We can do better. No American should be homeless, not in a country that spends what we spend on missiles and tanks and drones and other killing machines. Not in a country in which people spend what we spend on guns.