letters.

Lessons from Liz

The article about the formerly homeless Elizabeth Murray ("Liz's Story," 1/31/00) really moved me. I can identify with her struggles.

For many years I was homeless, a "gutter punk" in San Francisco. Nobody seems to care that a lot of the kids out there are getting desperate. Thirteen-year-old heroin addicts with HIV/AIDS are a common sight on the streets. It's important that more people are informed of the homeless situation, focusing on young runaways who become addicted to drugs and end up dead or in jail. There's a lot of us out there, and it's about time someone listened. Running us all around like a pack of rats, from street to curb, from block to block, from city to city, is not solving anything.

JENNY NOYES Ventura Youth Correctional Facility Camarillo, Calif The article shows you can overcome any obstacle, no matter how bad the situation may be.

ERIKA JACKSON

Chicago, Ill.

Is a crackdown the answer? Yes, I think it is. Homeless people can get a job just like everyone else. They beg for money, and most of them, when you give them money, buy beer with it.

ZACH CARGILE

Pelzer, S.C.

I am a teacher at an alternative high school just north of Seattle, and UPFRONT is fabulous. Your story got me to thinking about one student in my life who raises some interesting issues about the responsibility of the state to support youth, and the cracks kids fall through once they turn 18.

Rena is 18, and became my student almost two years ago. She had been out of school for nearly four years. She'd been living in a barn with no heat and no running water. Everything that a female child should ever be protected from she has been exposed to, and survived.

She now works full-time as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home, and has almost completed her sophomore year of high school. She actually now lives with me, because we could not find any housing for her between Bellingham and Seattle. For the first time she has realized that she is...