As West Coast fights homelessness, kindness is contentious
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Mohammed Aly does not see why he shouldn't try to ease the lives of Orange County's homeless. But the authorities — and many of his neighbors — disagree.
Aly, a 28-year-old lawyer and activist, has been arrested three times as he campaigned on behalf of street people. Recently, he was denied permission to install portable toilets on a dried-up riverbed, site of an encampment of roughly 400 homeless.
"It is a question of basic empathy," he said.
But his detractors are engaged in a debate up and down the West Coast as the region struggles to cope with a rising tide of homelessness.