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Knowledge best tool
against homelessness

As a single mother with two small children under the age of 2, I was homeless in 2019 in Santa Clara County.

Various agencies screened me multiple times, even to be considered for emergency shelter for myself and my children. As a property manager, I want to inform others that there are housing options for them, such as below-market-rate apartments, tax credits, HUD, property-based vouchers, and low-income and affordable housing. The goal is to have this information more readily available to the community.

Monica Cortez
San Jose

Community should come
together for unhoused

The homeless population has increased monumentally. California has the highest unhoused population in the United States.

I did my own research, and I saw that in San Jose, there has been a decrease in the number of unhoused people over the past two years. However, that doesn’t mean there has been a decrease in Santa Clara County. If we can figure out a plan to get more homeless shelters, ones with clothes, nurses and food, we can decrease the population in California.

Communities can help out and make a difference. We can ask for clothes from the community and whether any hospitals are willing to help out by sending nurses to check on unhoused residents.

As a community, we can advocate for people who don’t get a voice because society deems them less than.

Machelle Ruiz
San Jose

Climate change is more
expensive than solution

Re: “Consumers will pay if we punish Big Oil” (Page A8, May 11).

Dan Walters makes a commonly heard argument among climate change deniers that reducing carbon emissions is too expensive for consumers. Yet we all know climate change is an urgent threat that is already costing many billions of dollars every year. An extra 23 cents per gallon for gasoline due to cap and trade is relatively small, especially compared to the normal swings in gasoline prices due to global oil supply changes.

Current policies that reduce carbon emissions are working, just not working fast enough. Electric vehicles and renewable energy are lowering the cost of energy. Yet Big Oil is powerful and very effectively resists all actions that reduce the use of fossil fuels. Action against climate change is so urgent that we should look seriously at all options and not scare consumers about options that will have a significant impact on reducing emissions.

Rob Hogue
Menlo Park

We need a pause on
license plate cameras

License plate cameras must balance safety and privacy. I am torn myself.

However, my trust in related data being limited to local police investigations is severely shaken by the current federal administration’s activities.

DOGE is compiling a centralized database of widely disparate information on citizens. Their collection includes the Department of the Treasury, Social Security Administration, VA, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Medicare and Medicaid Services, the IRS and more.

A recent executive order demands “unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including third-party databases.”

Much is being slowed in courts, but outcomes there are uncertain, as is the administration’s respect for court orders.

Federal pressures for access to who of us went where are highly likely. The safest course for local communities is a moratorium on collecting license plate information until protections of this data are established.

Andreas Paepcke
Menlo Park

National malaise is
just what Trump ordered

We are suffering from a national malaise as Donald Trump intended.

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Create a daily barrage of misinformation, insults, preening, tantrums, constitutional grievances and corruption so we will be overwhelmed by his chaos and simply retreat and allow him a free hand to enrich himself and his friends, embarrass us on a global scale, and dismantle the government.

For 250 years, we naively believed we were impervious to the upheaval of oligarchs and dictators. Now we know how it happens. We were too comfortable and self-assured to notice as we brought doom upon ourselves. And now we suffer from fatigue and impotence as we watch from the sidelines.

Claudia Parker
San Jose