Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to [email protected]. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Agoraphobia is a common but serious anxiety disorder that may cause sufferers to avoid public spaces. Recently, I have had cause to be concerned for one likely agoraphobe: Texas’ 10th Congressional District Representative Mike McCaul. Representative McCaul has not held a town hall meeting since 2009 and his staff has not been able to produce a schedule of public appearances for the upcoming February recess. Exposure treatment is one of the most successful therapies for agoraphobia and I would strongly encourage Representative McCaul to take time to meet publicly with groups of constituents as soon as possible to begin the healing process. If Representative McCaul isn’t willing to hold town hall meetings we may be forced to conclude that he is avoiding the people he was elected to represent. Sadly, the treatment for that disorder won’t be available again until 2018.

Dear Editor,
    Your front page story – “Here Comes a Regular” – for the week of Feb. 3 is just damn appalling. Homelessness is a violent crime that the city of Austin commits against more than 2,000 people every day. We only have enough beds to sleep around 400 people every night, and the APD still enforces a "no sit, no lie" ordinance that penalizes folks for trying to get some rest, no matter what apologetic BS Troy Gay spouts to keep APD looking nice and liberal. The answer to the issues of the RRCD is not increased police presence and fences, but actual investment in folks who are experiencing cycles of poverty. The club owners interviewed are some vindictive and fragile creatures to think that their businesses are more important than people's lives. Y'all could all show some compassion – and more importantly – DO SOMETHING to help your fellow Austinites out.

Dear Editor,
    I was shocked by the dismissive, dehumanizing tone of your cover story on homelessness Downtown [“It's Like a Jungle Sometimes,” News, Feb. 3]. The article talks about homeless people as if they are wild animals or objects, certainly not human beings who might actually be able to answer some of the questions freely speculated about in the piece. The article actually uses the word “homeless” as a noun, subsuming people within this one aspect of their current circumstances (“Putting homeless in jail for …,” p.22). The pictures showing homeless people are all from behind or in the distance so that we cannot see their faces, painting them again as just props.
    The article does not even pay lip service to the fact that it is homeless people themselves who are most affected by homelessness, instead painting them as merely a threatening backdrop the rest of us must somehow cope with. The author shares the perspective of only one person who works with homeless people, and does not interview any homeless people at all. Instead, he reports opinions about who the “problem” people are and why they may or may not be receiving services as if they were facts. The factual information that is provided is sparse and only loosely tied to the conclusions drawn or hinted at.
    This article dehumanizes a vulnerable population and is just plain bad journalism.