Readers React: No more luxury developments, City Hall. Clean our filthy city first

To the editor: Steve Lopez, once again, has brought attention to what has become the disgusting state of our city. Now’s not the time for more luxury improvements — we need to get back to the basics of making Los Angeles safe and clean. We must clean up the streets and find a way to move homeless people into housing.

I live between the Beverly Center and the Grove. This area is a prime draw for tourists, but when I walk down my street, I am confronted with people making their homes on the sidewalks, along with their personal belongings and human waste.

I have voted in favor for every piece of legislation to raise funds for the improvement of our city. I have compassion for those who find themselves without a clean or safe place to live, but the rest of us who work and pay taxes deserve to live in a city that is clean and safe. We must enforce laws that deal with vagrancy and unsanitary conditions.

Thanks to Lopez for shining a bright light on this most important need. I am sure there are many readers who agree with me.

Liz Sherwin, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The situation Lopez describes has been going on for years, ignored by the grubbing and selfish Los Angeles City Council members and a preening, craven mayor, who spent much of the last year fantasizing about being president while thousands of his fellow humans suffered.

This is not new. This has been going on even as our leaders have bloviated about plastic bags and straws, fast-food containers and immigrants.

People suffer just blocks from City Hall. This is an enormous scandal that is now endangering the general population with medieval strains of disease. This is shameful and immoral and a blight on the history of the city I love.

Tracy Taft, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Regarding what Lopez calls the collapse of our city, look no further than Mayor Eric Garcetti to find the reason for our dire condition.

Garcetti spends so much time romancing developers and taking photos with dignitaries. His time would be better spent studying the record of former New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who actually cleaned up his city in the 1930s and ’40s.

I am not letting the City Council off the hook either. It would behoove Councilman Mitch O’Farrell to take a look at the disgrace that has become Hollywood Boulevard.

Stephen Snow, Reseda

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