“People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.”

3rd paragraph, 3rd to the last word. 'there' should be 'their' and you should be proofreading.

Mr. LeBlanc makes a good point about the intolerant among us who simply wish to rid the city of homeless - period. Theirs is an untenable position, which overlooks the importance of diversity in a vital community.

However, if it became clear that homelessness, itself, is not the problem and that the criminal among them is really what most of us object to, then perhaps we might be more united and effective in the fight to clean up our community. The inability of many to make this distinction is to blame for our inaction. We residents and business owners on Ballard Avenue have found that even the police hold this faulty view. Their blanket statement is that the city has a lenient homeless policy that prevents police action.

Well, the police are confused - and so is anyone who thinks of homelessness as a crime.

What is most visible in the parks and on the streets is crime by late stage alcoholics and crack and meth users - all people who follow the path of least resistance by taking advantage of our inaction in policing our neighborhood.

People! It is OK to dislike crime and donate to food banks and shelters at the same time. There is no contradiction in that. It is also OK to bring as much law down on the criminal as is humanly possible. Though many of the crimes such as public urination and defecation, drinking on the streets, prostitution, camping in the parks etc. are minor offenses, they still contribute to social disorder. If you consider the hard drug use we now have, you have the recipe for serious crime.

Yes, if we succeed in pushing the crime out of our neighborhood, it will relocate (a favorite excuse used by the police). It should be pursued and prosecuted wherever it goes.

If we are to have a vital community, which Ballard is becoming, we can help the truly homeless and rid our streets of the ugliness we all seem to object to.

I strongly urge you all to get involved, attend public meetings, contact the police if there is trouble, check out Tim Burgess' website for his Safe Streets Initiative, Attend City Council hearings on the inevitable budget cuts that will almost certainly affect public services, and USE THE PARKS! Don't leave them for the drunks and the crackheads.

And pointing out the typo is all you have to say about the article?

Perhaps you should go into editing. Then you could at least get paid to nit-pick instead of doing it during your free time.