Consider the people who need St. Joe’s the most

Kudos to Dr. Kathleen Heaney and Dr. Emily Brunner and the other letter signers regarding the retention of the mental health and addiction units at St. Josephs (“St. Joe’s needs to stay open to help meet a huge, gaping need,” Feb. 2)..

For many of us who work in smaller out-of-the-metro hospital facilities, St. Joseph’s has been our go-to place for in-patient mental health and addiction services.

M Health Fairview’s corporate leadership perhaps needs to consider not balancing their budget on the backs of the poor and uninsured but may need to look within their cooperation to balance it. Health care is in constant change, but St. Joseph’s had been around since 1853 with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet meeting need after need of the poorest of the poor.

Up until 2017 Catholic Charities’ single parent program used St. Joe’s as their go-to hospital for pregnant woman. The sisters ran the Catholic Infant Home on Carroll Avenue for years with the woman delivering at the hospital in a most respectful and caring manner. That program continued to Seton Residence and to Seton Center directly across from the hospital and eventually to Mary Hall. Again, clinics and mothers were kindly and carefully cared for along with their babies.

I trust that many patients from Mary Hall, Higher Ground and Dorothy Day all see St. Josephs as their hospital. Granted, the cost of healthcare is doing nothing but going up, but please consider other cuts, perhaps even in administration, but don’t exclude the people who need that downtown facility the most. Closing the hospital would leave a huge unfilled gap in medical services.

Michelle R. Bailey, Stillwater

Kudos for efforts to help students

I was pleased to see that the St. Paul City Council has paired up with the city’s public schools to offer rent subsidies to low-income families that have children in the early grades. The U.S. Department of Education has warned that moving around a lot, or living in temporary situations like motels or doubling up with other families, tends to hurt children’s school achievement and emotional development. One randomized study in New York City found that families who don’t get help with housing are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety compared with those who move to new, subsidized housing. That repeated exposure to acute stress might help explain the long-term effects on kids’ incomes and incarceration rates that a National Bureau of Economic Research paper found. Stability matters.

The U.S. hasn’t built much public housing since the 1990s, and it has demolished some of what it used to have. Section 8 housing vouchers aren’t filling the gap, since only 1 in 4 households that qualify for a housing voucher actually gets one. Meanwhile, the federal government spends almost twice as much on mortgage interest tax deductions, which overwhelmingly go to the wealthy, as it does helping people with rent for low-income families and individuals. Kudos to Mayor Carter, the city council and the school district in their efforts to help students and young families that are in need of stable housing.

M.L. Kluznik, Mendota Heights