SOUNDING OFF: Homeless lawsuit necessary to bring change

I don’t understand why people believe that lawyers who bring public interest lawsuits have some sort of secret malign purpose. It does not seem to occur to Lou Volpano (“Why is Newport law firm suing Laguna?” March 6) that many attorneys, such as those at Irell & Manella in Newport Beach, believe that it is part of their civic duty to lend their time and skills to the resolution of social problems.

When I was a young lawyer, for example, I devoted several years of my career to the issue of discrimination in housing against families with children, ultimately obtaining rulings from the California Supreme Court that outlawed the practice.

I do not have children, nor do I particularly like them, but I recognized the discrimination that prevented them from obtaining rental housing was a significant social issue that needed correction and that, the issue having fallen into my lap, it was part of my duty of “giving back” to the society that gave me my education to do what I can to rectify the problem.

I believe that the attorneys at Irell & Manella (and the ACLU) who undertook the lawsuit against Laguna Beach perceived that the treatment of the homeless in “” and by “” the city was a serious social and legal issue, and were willing to confront it, notwithstanding the great expenditure of time that such a legal action requires, and the considerable risk to their client “image,” as Volpano points out.

Obviously, many in town disagree with them, just as many people who believed in their “right” to live free of the presence of children hated my lawsuit, and others hated lawsuits that infringed on their “right” to exclude racial minorities from housing, but that is not the criterion:

I think you may be certain that there was also serious disagreement with efforts to effect racial integration of public schools and to bring about the right of same-sex couples to marry by many who simply did not perceive that the plight of these people was real or of sufficient importance to justify the legal action “” and in both of those cases, the clear will of the majority was (and is, right now) contrary to the purpose of the lawsuits.

The people in town who say the plight of the homeless is not a problem all tend not to be homeless themselves. Catherine Cooper’s article in the same edition reflects that attitude. The issue is not “camping” on the beach as we did as children in the Scouts.

The issue is how a resident of Laguna Beach who is homeless “” and despite the fact of homelessness they are residents “” can live, can carry out the basic functions of staying alive: eating, sleeping, bathing, dressing, possessing property, all those “rights” that we all take so much for granted.

Catherine also refuses to acknowledge that the homeless share in the “ownership” of public property and facilities, as we all do, and therefore should have an equal and protected right to make use of those facilities, and I am sure she knows that most of the homeless men and women sleeping on the beach would gladly trade their “ocean views” for the comfort of a bed and secure home in any other place.

The perception of the Irell & Manella and ACLU attorneys that we have problems about how we treat our homeless residents has forced us to focus upon those issue “” perhaps not as we wanted to focus upon them, but as people who think they are problems believe they must be treated, and I do firmly believe that just as other public interest lawsuits (think Brown v. Board of Education) have ultimately blended into the fabric of a better society, the action against the city will be part of a solution we will all come to see as necessary.

GENE GRATZ lives in Laguna Beach.