Another good opportunity to help solve this country's homeless situation has been lost. The Chinese/American buffet restaurant on Market Street between 15th and 17th Northwest has been torn down along with residences and businesses.

The restaurant building would have been an ideal facility for a homeless shelter. Instead it and the other buildings were torn down to be replaced by a large condominium and business complex.

The torn down building has facilities for preparing and serving meals, (it) had bathrooms and adequate room for quite a number of mats. This is yet another example of talk and no action to help out the homeless in this county.

Many parts of Ballard have had homeless people on the premises, such as the sidewalks between the restaurant building and its parking lot, a building north of the 7-Eleven at 17th and Market and underneath the Ballard Bridge.

These problems could have been dealt with by (creating) a new shelter. Where will these people go now?

The homeless problem is everyone's problem. The liberal solutions are not necessarily the whole solution. So called global warming ecological actions encourage condominiums....

Excessive rules, regulations and taxation have caused landlords to convert their buildings into condominiums. All of this hurts low-income residents, many who are already homeless or may soon become so because of these conversions.

Ecological zealotry and rules and regulations and heavy taxation of property are liberal political beliefs. It is time to realize that not only over tight fisted behavior but also certain liberal behaviors cause more homelessness, not less.

I am a conservative Republican and have been so during my entire adult life. I believe many conservative people care about homeless and want to help out. But they are often shackled by liberal policies.

It is time to thoroughly examine such policies and modify in the best interests of homeless people and, indeed, everyone.

Michael Van Mieghem

Ballard