Letters to the editor July 29

Commit to solving homelessness

Since I have loved ones living in Washington, D.C., I’ve come to be neither frightened nor shocked by sights of homelessness like the child doing his homework with a pencil and notebook in a lawn chair under an overpass. How could he focus with cars whipping past within a few feet? But he was trying.

I’m still capable of being shocked at the callous approach some take to the problems resulting from poverty. In our state of Montana, and in fact of the whole country. We’ve recently witnessed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case of City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson allowing cities to outlaw homelessness without solving it. We’ve come to a place in our history where sleeping outside can be deemed criminal. People don’t choose homelessness. It’s symptomatic of the underlying problem of skyrocketing housing costs and increasing poverty.