■ “I live directly across the street on Delaware from that area and I’m sick and tired of the homeless coming through there two and three times a week and using our street to pick up cans and bottles out of the trash cans that are on the street. They also go across the street from the apartment next door to me and sit there for hours on end drinking beer and urinating onto the fence on the freeway. And I don’t think that it’s fair that the Pico neighborhood should be burdened with all of the homeless population problems in our neighborhood. Why don’t they go somewhere else, even if it’s north of Wilshire, for a change? They have nothing like what we have over here. We have Virginia Park, which they have taken over because it’s close and it’s cool and they can sleep there all day long. So, I’m very unhappy with this situation. We also have this new program down here at the Claire Foundation on Pico Boulevard that I think is stupid. Why should we have to take in drunks from other cities and put them in our facilities that are supposed to be used for Santa Monica? I think its absolutely ridiculous. I’m sure these people need somewhere to go but let them go somewhere else for a change. Let them go to other parts of the city, not over here. True, it’s by the dump and it’s by Olympic Boulevard and everything else but we’re going to be impacted by this situation here. I’ve seen it in the past. I’ve been here for 37 years and I’ve never seen it as bad as its been in the last five to six years.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.