I am really tired of hearing people who were raised with the popular skills for taking care of themselves saying they think anyone who doesn’t have those skills must be lazy or even defective.

Does anyone really think that we now have more homeless people in Chico because of the cushy shelters where people are sleeping on mats on the floor or at the top of a triple bunk; told when to go to sleep, when to wake up; deprived of showers and privacy; but at least it’s out of the weather?

For pity sakes! It’s because it is even harder now than a few years ago to make enough money to keep yourself housed and because, all things considered, our weather is friendlier than the Midwest.

I don’t have as much experience as some people out on the street, but I am privileged to have been making sandwiches every week for the past five years and distributing them to anyone who is hungry on Sundays. I see about the same proportion of angry, unkind people among the unhoused as I do in the grocery store: very few. The struggle to keep it together just to wake up tomorrow takes a lot more energy than the safely housed seem able to imagine.

I would ask all of you to please consider your blessings and have compassion for those who have fewer of them. Let’s keep trying to find ways to shelter those among us who have lost society’s lottery.

— Nancy Wirtz, Chico

Editor’s note: Every Sunday, we will select one letter from the previous seven days as our “Letter of the Week.” We’re choosing the letter that, in our view, stands as the best example of civil, thoughtful and fact-based commentary – with extra points given on occasion for originality.