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Orozco, Norma From:Lopez, Martha (Medical Student) <marthal1@hs.uci.edu> Sent:Tuesday, May 04, 2021 3:27 PM To:eComment Subject:City of Santa and El Centro Cultural: Comment Dear City of Santa Ana, On behalf of our medical school student team currently working with El Centro Cultural, we are disappointed to learn about the threats to pursue legal action against El Centro Cultural and the homeless individuals residing in their parking lot. Despite the pandemic, El Centro Cultural has worked diligently to ensure the community is safe and educated about resources available to them. Rather than antagonize and criminalize homelessness, El Centro recognized the hardships caused by the pandemic and has allowed homeless individuals to reside on their premises. The City should realize that homelessness is not an isolated issue caused by El Centro Cultural, and their intention is not to allow homeless individuals to reside there permanently. However, resolving homelessness cannot be placed on the shoulders of El Centro Cultural, and any forced displacement of these homeless individuals onto the streets is antithetical to the values El Centro Cultural holds towards its community members. Given that the City has access to federal funds to help our vulnerable community members, we request that the City utilize vacant public land where homeless individuals can live peacefully, avoid constant harassment and conflicts with police or neighborhood residents. We stand with El Centro Cultural in their message to use public resources to help our homeless neighbors vulnerable to COVID-19 in the street! We hope that your response towards homelessness will be rooted in respect, patience, and creativity towards solving such issues. Above all, we ask that you work with community organizations like El Centro Cultural rather than threaten legal action. Sincerely, Irene Gonzalez, Stephanie Guevera, Martha Lopez, Edgar Quintero, Jenny Ventura Medical Students at University of California, Irvine School of Medicine Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC) This message may contain confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, do not use, distribute, or copy this e-mail. Please notify the UC Irvine Health – Compliance and Privacy Office via email at hacompliance@uci.edu or by phone 888-456-7006 immediately if you have received this e-mail in error. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. 4