Letters to the Editor: What Boyle Heights thinks of turning its Sears building into homeless housing

LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 18: The Sears in Boyle Heights is set to close in April after nearly 94 years in business. The first floor is still being used as a store where everything including fixtures is being liquidated. The store opened in 1927 and closed in 1992. Photographed on Thursday, March 18, 2021 in Los Angeles, CA. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sears closed its iconic store in Boyle Heights in April 2021 after almost 94 years in business. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: The owner of Boyle Heights' iconic Sears building says he wants to help the community with his plan to create housing for 2,500 people, with priority going to homeless residents.

How is building a 2,500-bed facility (down from 10,000) going to help Boyle Heights?

As a longtime resident of Boyle Heights, I can probably count on both hands the number of homeless people that originate from our community. The vast majority who arrived over the last decade came from downtown Los Angeles or other parts of the county.

Building a modern shopping complex at the Sears site would be more beneficial to the community. For many decades Boyle Heights residents have had to go outside the neighborhood to cities like Montebello, Monterey Park and Glendale to enjoy contemporary dining and shopping experiences.

We would like to keep our dollars in our community and have good-paying jobs.

Salvador Jimenez, Los Angeles

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To the editor: L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis objects to converting the Sears building to a facility to house homeless people. City Councilman Kevin de León hasn't made up his mind, and the local neighborhood council opposes the project.

Apparently the residents of the community are OK with homelessness in their neighborhood. This is not a new phenomena. Everyone from Venice to San Pedro to Woodland Hills talks about the need to house the homeless, just not in their neighborhood.

Whether Rep. Karen Bass or Rick Caruso becomes mayor will make no difference in solving the problem. The NIMBYs are in the driver's seat. Camping under freeways and in parks will be a permanent part of our society.

Of course, homeless people will be removed from sight during the 2028 Olympics. We don't want to look like a Third World city, but we are.

Don Evans, Canoga Park

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To the editor: My wife and I were born in Manzanar, and our families eventually settled in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles after being released following World War II. I found it outrageous that some in the article compared the housing of homeless people in a renovated Sears building to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans into prison camps.

For starters, racism was the basis for the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the west coast. Unlike the Sears building, the 10 prison camps were surrounded by barbed wire fencing and gun towers.

Furthermore, offering a bed in a renovated building to 2,500 people is no comparison to the hastily built, non-insulated barracks in which Japanese Americans had to survive during the hot summers and freezing winters. At the Poston and Gila prison camps in Arizona, summer temperatures were in the triple digits. The camps at Manzanar in California and Heart Mountain in Wyoming received snow during the cold, windy winters.

Larry Naritomi, Monterey Park

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.