Readers comments: April 22, 2022

Affordable housing commentary
Dear editor:
Regarding affordable housing I see us not at a crossroad but more like a roundabout or traffic rotary to stop, look all ways and proceed if safe. And with an eye to the future of inclusiveness after a long run of what many see as the ideal way of life. We have left many behind and see now that as unfair. Let’s live with new neighbors with support and understanding. Larkin Place safety will come with a rigorous screening of applicants to prevent crimes against the eldery and children. Thank you for your clear, concise statement of the issues of affordable housing. We’re fortunate to have this joint project of Pilgrim Place and Jamboree Housing Corporation, two not-for-profit organizations with proven track records for excellent residential services. Failure to do our own planning and development of affordable housing may come at a steep price should our state government step in.
Rita Gonzales Levine
Claremont

A good society
Dear editor:
When Lyndon Johnson called his program The Great Society, the journalist Murray Kempton remarked that he would prefer a good society. Kempton’s ear was just right. Greatness, for nations at least, does not fall onto the same scale as goodness (just as evil is not being very, very naughty). To be a great nation requires domination: military power and successful military adventures with economic and political domination as well.
We are currently seeing that pursuit of national greatness in Putin’s desire to Make Russia Great Again – and so the brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Our own version of Putin – Trump lacks Putin’s intelligence and depths of cruelty and his wanting in the end merely more personal achievements (money, adulation) – did have the words down pat: Make America Great Again.
Let us not get sucked into the pursuit of greatness – what we need to achieve is a good society.
Merrill Ring
Claremont

Low-income housing
Dear editor:
Your editorial of Friday, April 15 does an injustice to those of us opposed—not to a residence for low-income and “unhoused” people in Larkin Park, quite the contrary—but to Jamboree’s proposed funding source which requires that people with ongoing drug use, and/or mental illness cannot be denied residence, and further, cannot be evicted for such. It is proposed as a “permanent supportive housing” facility” that must admit people with ongoing drug use issues. Furthermore these people will come from agencies that serve eastern L.A. County.
I have attended several meetings of the group that is trying to influence the characteristics of such a facility, and no one there has voiced any objections to the construction of the facility for low-income and/or homeless persons, especially veterans, older folks and homeless persons that are indigenous to Claremont, who will not be sought as residents for the proposed facility. I do not speak for that group, but have in fact heard their much support for a facility in the proposed site that would accommodate people as these.
But to locate a facility that must accommodate current drug-users and persons with mental illness, where counseling is optional, where up to three unvetted visitors per unit are permissible for two weeks out of every month (but which has no apparent means of enforcing that rule—evictions are not allowed), to have all this in close proximity to El Roble Intermediate School (not to mention its nearness to other schools and retirement communities) seems madness, not just “complaining NIMBYism.”
Robert Borton
Claremont