Letters, 11/30: Putting face on homeless

 11 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

Mayor Chris Beutler has proclaimed November as Homeless and Hunger Awareness Month in the city of Lincoln. He read the proclamation at the ninth annual Lincoln Lancaster County Homeless Coalition Recognition Event on Nov. 14. Each year, coalition organizations that provide services to the homeless and the Lincoln Police Department conduct the Point in Time survey to estimate the size of Lincoln’s homeless population. The survey was done during the first week of September, and the results indicate 1,311 people were housed in a shelter, living on the street or receiving services such as transitional housing.

As the representative of Nebraska Wesleyan University on the homeless coalition, my role is to connect campus resources to identified needs in the community. The university’s students have served at many of the more than two dozen social service providers represented on the coalition.

This year, I volunteered to help with the Point in Time survey at the People’s City Mission and interviewed people there during the noon mealtime. The survey included questions about how many times the individual had been homeless, how long and the primary reason for homelessness.

Asking these questions of an individual sitting across the table from me as compared to reading the results of the survey in a report put a human face on homelessness in my community. My interviewees mentioned loss of employment, death of a spouse, mental illness, alcoholism and substance abuse as reasons for homelessness. I knew from information gathered in follow-up interviews by Wesleyan University sociology students with last year’s Point in Time survey participants that most did not have a support system of family members who could help in times of crisis.

I felt grateful for all the organizations and volunteers in Lincoln who have rallied to offer assistance; however, listening to my interviewees made me realize that the solutions to ending homelessness run much deeper than providing food and shelter. After asking questions of these individuals, there was one that remained for me: What would it really take to end homelessness in Lincoln?

Carol Leonhardt, Lincoln

Buy real trees, not artificial

Christmas trees add a special feeling to Christmas. But when looking for a tree, you should consider buying a real tree instead of an artificial tree.

Real Christmas trees are better to buy because they have no harmful elements in them. Fake trees are made in China and shipped to the United States from many different factories. They are made out of plastics and metals and contain polyvinyl chloride, PVC. This harmful chemical lets out dioxins that may cause cancer and damage immune systems, according to the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition. California law even requires a warning label to be placed on artificial trees because they contain harmful substances.

Buying a real Christmas tree is also better for the environment, because real trees are biodegradable. After Christmas is over, they can be recycled in many factories all over the United States. If they are left to decompose, they add nutrients into the earth. Fake trees, on the other hand, do not.

Emily La Telle, Lincoln

Electoral College needed

I would like to respond to Leland Stege’s letter about the Electoral College being outdated.

I think some people still just do not get it. We are not one big country; we are 50 sovereign republics in a union of states. The president is the president of the union of states, not the president of the people. The states elect the president of the union, not the people, and the states decide how their republic should vote in the Electoral College.

If you eliminate the Electoral College, you make the states political subdivisions and overthrow the concept of a union of states that are sovereign. In other words, doing away with the Electoral College does away with the United States of America.

Our founding fathers were very wise and knew the only way to protect our liberties was to keep government as small as possible. They also wanted to protect the sovereignty of the states.

Our Constitution is a compact of the union of states known as the United States of America. If Nebraska and its 49 sister states of this union are to retain any semblance of independence, we must retain the Electoral College and the entire Constitution.

If we go to a popular vote system that does away with the Electoral College, Nebraskans should just as well never vote again, and they should just consolidate us into a larger province. And forget the Bill of Rights, those first 10 amendments to the Constitution, for they would all be null and void, especially the 10th Amendment.

If the states lose their rights, then we the people have none, either. Not someplace I would want to be a citizen of.

JR Wolfe, York

Clean energy focus urged

The Nov. 19 article on the state's economy  hopefully will provide incentive for Nebraska lawmakers to see the real need for our state to become a leader in the clean energy economy.

We have the sixth-largest wind resource in the nation, and yet we are behind 18 other states in production of electricity from wind.

When we had the ability to produce corn ethanol, we seized the opportunity and made sure our natural resources were utilized to keep Nebraska’s economy strong, creating a product and jobs for Nebraskans.

Again, we have an opportunity to use our natural resources and our hard work to revive local economies and have a place to raise our children and grandchildren.

Americans are concerned about the troubled economy, but the picture isn’t bleak everywhere.

A few examples from a recent report from the American Wind Energy Association: In Little Rock, Ark., Polymarin Composites and Wind Water Technologies announced in October that it will invest $20 million to construct a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant from an existing facility. The plant will create 830 new jobs with an average wage of $15 per hour.

In Newton, Iowa, TPI Composites opened a 316,000-square-foot wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in September. TPI Iowa plans to eventually employ 500 people.

These communities are being refueled, rebuilt and repowered by a new clean energy economy. I want to see the same thing happen in Nebraska.

Michelle Michalski, Lincoln