County Response to the Homeless

Orange County’s inadequate response to the needs of the homeless among us was the subject of a worthwhile commentary (“Homeless Test County’s Morality,” March 27) by Donald A. Sizemore, director of planning for the Community Development Council.

The county’s general prosperity belies the helplessness suffered by thousands in our midst, and as a whole, we deserve the indictment.

However, in his effort to indicate the pervasiveness of an uncaring attitude, he erred in citing one example. He spoke of a low-income senior citizen housing proposal that failed after the neighboring church “first used its political clout to stop the project and then bought the property and leveled the building” (the old Santa Ana Hotel). This statement, in my opinion, is unfair to the membership of the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Ana.

This congregation several times rejected the opportunity to move to suburbs and, instead, has chosen to be an inner-city church with all its attendant problems and needs. More than 5,000 people a month are fed and clothed in the old social hall beneath the sanctuary.

Members assist with numerous other projects serving the homeless and disadvantaged, including the Southwest Center, Episcopal Service Alliance, Martha House, the Mary Magdalene Project, the Women’s Transitional Living Center and the YWCA. During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles the church opened its own facilities to house people displaced from low-cost motels.

The dilapidated hotel was not a suitable building for conversion to low-cost housing. The aim of the congregation in acquiring that property was to serve the downtown community, including the needy.

HELEN M. JOHNSON

Irvine