Mailbag: Homeless sleepover event lacked true cruelty of the streets

Re. “Reporter’s Notebook: ‘Homeless’ for a night,” (Nov. 24): Thanks for the article on the sleep-out. I had heard about it and wondered how it went.

Of course, to make the experience more authentic, you’d have to have the police harassing the reporter, the local bar patrons being mean to him, homeless drug addicts stealing from him and everyone with a cellphone telling on him.

The end-homeless campaign is adorable and quite ambitious. To think that Costa Mesa could stop people from making a lifestyle choice that our free country allows us to make is an interesting concept. But maybe the city’s endless committee meetings, reports and charts will uncover the secret to making everyone more socially acceptable.

I interact with the homeless every day at Orange County’s largest mental hospital in Santa Ana.

Lisa Waldschmidt

Costa Mesa

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Bunnies serve as spending reminder

Is Newport Beach Councilman Scott Peotter really contemplating donating the concrete bunnies to a “museum or another party” without a cost to taxpayers (“Councilman-elect Peotter: Newport Civic Center ‘bunnies’ should go,” Nov. 13)? Who in the world is going to move them for free?

That idea is even worse than the quarter-million spent buying them. Do we have that kind of money in Newport to throw away twice? Is there a big resale market for oversized, used concrete bunnies?

Keep the bunnies as a reminder to reel in spending and also for the enjoyment of those who like them.

Jane Owen

Newport Beach

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Too late to move bunnies now

Regarding the rabbit statues at the park: Had I been on the council, I never would have voted to authorize these giant rodent-like creatures.

But now that they are there, and doing no additional harm, the idea of removing them seems even more ludicrous than putting them there in the first place.

How much will their removal cost? And something else would have to be put in their place to fill the holes. How much would that cost? Leave them alone, and maybe they will do what bunnies usually do, and we can sell off the extras, or send them to Easter Island.

What really surprises me is how controversial these bunnies are, and I’ve never heard any complaints about the three-story-high dog statue, which actually “urinates” on the nearby art museum.

Lenard Davis

Newport Beach