It was Sunday past and Patricia McVerry, a West L.A. resident and self-described newspaper addict, was reading the L.A. Times when she came upon the story of St. Vincent Medical Center’s impending closure after roughly 150 years in business.
“I said to my husband, ‘How come they can’t think about using this for some of our homeless population?’” said McVerry, who emailed me her pitch. She asked me to “run this up the flagpole” with local officials and she thanked me in advance for “noodling this idea.”
The first thing her proposal made me noodle was how great it is that so many people are engaged in looking for solutions to the humanitarian crisis of our time. We need all the good ideas we can get.
Sure, Gov. Gavin Newsom is on a “homeless tour” after asking for another $1 billion to finance solutions, and his state-appointed commission just turned in a couple of dozen recommendations, including one that would require cities and counties to figure it out sooner rather than later. So you can cross your fingers, light a candle and pray that 2020 is the year things begin to turn around.
