In response to Betty Owen’s Guest Commentary (issue 208 Sept. 15)
Dear Editor,
Thank you for publishing Betty Owen’s brilliant article. I have discovered yet another reason why the lottery application process for the new North Park, LGBT senior building is so unfair.
Though the corporate-owned media has woefully neglected to report it, America’s primary housing assistance program, the HCVP (Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly called “Section 8”) has grown desperate, mercilessly tossing innocent senior, disabled and other low-income people, out into the streets due to no fault of their own.
As a result of “sequestration” (America’s disastrous version of “austerity”), created by Republicans in Congress, tens of billions have been slashed from our nation’s housing assistance programs, since 2010.
Last year (2015), one out of four Section 8 participants who attempted to move into or within Los Angeles, permanently lost their Housing Choice Vouchers, due to the time limit running out before they were able to locate a single, qualifying unit in the entirety of LA County!
Please allow that fact to sink in for a moment. Fully half of those newly made homeless were senior and/or disabled!
San Diego estimates the number of HCVP participants made homeless last year by this crisis at 16 percent. Honolulu’s figure is 50 percent, and a Representative of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless quoted me a figure of 64 percent for Denver.
When even senior and disabled are being abandoned, then the wealthiest nation in the history of the world has blood all over its hands for betraying human beings who are unable to support themselves.
This crisis disproportionately affects the LGBT community, too! I will gladly take my chances in Nicaragua or Colombia before I will ever risk my neck again, living in a place such as Texas, where I was constantly made to feel a “second-class citizen” for being gay. One out of every four LGBT youth who come out to their parents, are disowned by either one or both of those parents. And 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT!
At a time when so many are so desperate, must we gamble away the few available, local, affordable housing units?
Dave Dean
SAN DIEGO
