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Today's Letters: Feeding homeless isn't 'reckless'

Do you really support the troops or is it just fashionable to sport ribbons on your cars? According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, by conservative estimates one-third of all the homeless men are veterans - veterans who answered the call to serve in peace and to fight in war.

But Danny O'Brien, a downtown St. Petersburg hotel owner, objects to caring people feeding these veterans. Recently he called efforts to feed homeless veterans and others "reckless feeding." According to the St. Petersburg Times, this was O'Brien's term for freelance food handouts in Williams Park and elsewhere which, he said, only makes the problem worse.

I wonder what O'Brien would say if al-Qaida were in downtown St. Petersburg. I bet he would want help from today's soldiers to protect him - as long as they don't get hungry in the future, of course.

In the same article, reporter Jon Wilson writes that other business people felt like "a forgotten legion." I wonder what the homeless veterans feel like. They served when we asked them and made the sacrifices, as did their families. Some were maimed and even tortured. Some never made it back home.

But please, don't feed them. We wouldn't want "reckless feeding" to undo all the efforts to spruce up St. Petersburg . I hope you remember your support when today's soldiers become tomorrow's homeless and hungry.

Regina Rhyne Clark, Pinellas Park

Potential Pandora's box

What is going on in St. Petersburg? The homeless have invaded our city and are camping out wherever they wish, and are now demanding that the city give them their due.

What rights do they have? Are we, the taxpaying, working citizens, supposed to support them in the manner that they think they are entitled to? Who gave them those rights?

Is someone in the city on a guilt trip because of the tent slashing? Now we are supposed to fund housing for them? Then we are supposed to give them training (which they do not want)? Then give them money (which they do want, but not for food and clothes)?

Then the word gets out, and we will have hundreds, if not thousands more coming from all parts of the country to be "helped."

Have you ever heard of Pandora?

James Bardsley, St. Petersburg

They're not just bums 

Duo's office: the streets March 7, story by Anne Lindberg, March 7

Pinellas Park's homeless outreach program, which directly determines the needs of homeless individuals, deserves plaudits. But will that dispel their pariah status as a group and get them off the streets en masse? Will this program protect the masses of these defenseless people against attacks from teenagers or any that would do them harm?

Public opinion varies relative to the homeless. Many just label them as bums and have broad contempt for all of them. This, in spite of the fact the St. Petersburg Times has done in-depth articles about the vast number of women and kids who are destitute and homeless. Entire families are on the streets. But so many within the public realm are self-centered and self-indulgent and don't care. To them, the only reality is self-interest.

Innocent children cannot isolate themselves from mistreatment and the consequences of homelessness. All homeless families want a place to live so they and their children can believe in tomorrow. Most adult males wish to be gainfully employed (many are, but don't make enough to pay rent) and to live under a roof, not the night sky.

Personally, I'd rather be associated with benevolence and mercy, as were Jesus, Gandhi and Mother Teresa, than with smug stinginess, as are the heartless, the inhumane and the callous among us. Some day, hopefully, there will be no more homeless and happiness will be the supreme reality. It will be compassionate, loving folks who bring this about and not the unfeeling, stone hearted people who constantly downgrade and discredit the homeless as if they were all just less than human. Human misery doesn't have to be in our beloved America!

Robert B. Fleming, St. Petersburg

Portable toilets? No 

Leader offers a relief plan Feb. 28, story

I appreciate that St. Petersburg City Council members are addressing complaints from downtown business owners and residents regarding the homeless using the streets as their bathroom. However, council Chairman John Bryan's plan to provide portable toilets sends a message to the homeless that it's okay to congregate downtown.

If council members really want to help downtown business owners like myself and encourage economic growth, they should be focusing on how to relocate the homeless out of the Central Business District and into shelters.

If anything, St. Petersburg should adopt Orlando's and Charlotte, North Carolina's policy of locking all public bathrooms at dusk to discourage loitering.

Scott Smith, St. Petersburg

To help, plant a tree

There is considerable discussion in the paper and on television about global warming, even promising a large monetary award for a person who can come up with a solution to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

Fossil fuel certainly may be contributing to that. However, the fact that the world's population is larger than it has ever been probably is playing no small part. There is also good evidence that there is running water on Mars from melting ice, and since our atmosphere has nothing to do with Mars, this would suggest that the sun is hotter at this time. Hopefully it will cool off before we are all cremated.

The most logical and simplest solution to the carbon dioxide problem is if everyone in the world would find a small place and plant a tree (which would remove the carbon dioxide), this would go a long way and add shade, beauty and pleasure for us.

Johnny Appleseed was not wrong to plant apple trees, and perhaps the world's population might not be wrong in planting oak trees to suck up the carbon dioxide.

Stanley S. Moles, Largo

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[Last modified March 13, 2007, 22:33:53]