Editor,
At a recent City Council meeting, the issue of parking came up.
Yes, many side streets are being used by tourists. However, many of the cars belong to our neighbors who may have more than one car or two cars and their garages are packed full of things. Thus, in some cases it is impossible to get two cars in much less one. Some people call this hoarding.
In a recent New York Times article, a study was done and it seems that being a hoarder has nothing to do with age but that age is a large problem. I cut this article out and provided it to the Senior Center as one of the suggestions in the article was for communities to bring together social workers, fire department personnel and if possible a senior center staff to provide a class on hoarding to help with this issue. From a fire standpoint, hoarders are often found dead among their belongings either because the fire department could not get into the residence fast enough, many of the items were extremely combustible or the person was dead already and no one knew about it as the victim could not move to get help.
I hope that we can also offer this type of informative service soon in our community. It seems that a national expert on this subject is a local in Orange County.
Ganka Brown, Laguna Beach
