To the editor:

In 1991, the Journal-World reported on what a big problem affordable housing and homelessness were in Lawrence and said something needed to be done to fix the problem. Nothing was ever really done; instead the city government and community allowed a handful of churches and community groups to try and stem the tide of homelessness alone. Now, the Journal-World uses misleading headlines and editorials to paint a picture of a city government that “has no plan” but wants to continue a sales tax to put a fraction of a cent of each sales tax dollar in a fund that will be used to help ease homelessness and an affordable housing problem. A problem that has grown like the ponderous chain carried by Ebenezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens classic.

The J-W editorial that paints such a negative image of city leaders and calls for abandoning the plan to renew the current tax and use it to help address homelessness is just adding links to the chain that the city has been working on for many decades.