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Ted McDonough’s March 19 story about the plight of Salt Lake City’s single-room occupancy hotels “Gimme Shelter” prompted “BarryPortugal” to speak his mind about what he thinks makes Salt Lake City suck so thoroughly: “Salt Lake City is a poor, trashy, methed-out wasteland. The city needs to step it up and push the poor people out so people who work in this city and make money can live in a decent community. ... You cannot walk around downtown or go to the library without seeing junkies and meth zombies everywhere. The police are not aggressive enough, landlords would rather rent affordable spaces to Junkies than students and young people, and while all this is going on, the city suffers and the people who could make a cultural change in this wasteland are leaving every week to go to better places.”
Now, that’s an idea! Perhaps if the police got more “aggressive” on Salt Lakers’ asses and started putting all the “zombies” into supermax prisons (at a price of $40,000 per year per zombie), our fair city would be magically transformed into a paradise.
On the other hand, it would likely be more humane (not to mention more economical) to accept the fact that a number of people are in need of affordable housing—and not all of them are meth-heads and junkies. Here’s what “timothy” had to say: “The Ted McDonough story on SROs is right on. It hits the city council nail right on the head. There is a developer willing to preserve the buildings, do SRO housing, resurrect the theatre and add commercial space. So what is the problem? Let´s get started.”
D.P. Sorensen’s May 26 satire column “Putting Circumcision to a Vote” examined the recent controversy over a San Francisco ballot measure that would ban the circumcision of males under age 18.