Homes for The Homeless

I was moved by the item about San Francisco Architect Donald MacDonald, who has designed small, waterproof shelters for the city's homeless ((NATION, May 11)). The Reagan Administration chooses to allot millions of dollars to foreign countries while ignoring certain domestic problems. The homeless wandering our streets are Americans. Our Government should be serving its own citizens before distributing money abroad.

Marshall J. Pauly

Adel, Iowa

Henry David Thoreau beat Donald MacDonald to plywood sleepers more than 100 years ago, when he wrote in Walden: "I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and . . . get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free."

Evelyn Gelerter

Litchfield, Conn.