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# Accountability is key to clean alleys
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/accountability-is-key-to-clean-alleys/
- Published: 2004-10-16T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:18:16.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Mid-City, #archive-import, Homeless

This past week, Q-line asked: “How can City Hall, business owners and residents work together to better monitor and ensure the cleanliness and safety of the city’s alleyways?”

Here are your responses: ✆ “It’s real easy. All they have to do — the business owners, Santa Monica residents, visitors to the city — is call 911, the number which would notify the police, who could notify the trash detail for the city of Santa Monica 24/7\. At any rate, if they could just set it up so that it’s monitored by the city, through the police department and the trash collection operation on Michigan. This would solve the problem. Just simply dial 911 and indicate the location and what the problem is. The same thing could be held true for drug addicts roaming the alleys.” ✆ “The Santa Monica street and alley maintenance department has never let me down when I have called regarding a street or alley public safety issue. Unfortunately, the residents of Santa Monica use the alleys for their own private junkyard. The drivers of the rubbish trucks are not allowed out of the trucks to hand-load the trash. As a result, the junk stays in the alley, adding to the clutter. Also, the alley sweeper can only, by the most part, sweep the center of the alley due to trash bins being aligned along each side of the alley. If a person picks up a hose to wash the urine, feces and regurgitation into the center of the alley for the sweeper, residents yell, “You are wasting water!” ✆ “Our alleys are regularly used by extra-legals — businesses which go through all the garbage in the alleys, in all the cans. This is a code violation, but no one seems to care about this. If we would regulate this, perhaps even license these industrious people who go through the garbage, then they could create businesses, maybe even create capital for themselves, and perhaps would be more responsible about cleaning. But until we do something about people going through all the garbage, regularly, nothing will be done.” ✆ “Due to the overwhelming bum population in Santa Monica, I think keeping the alleys safe and clean is an impossible task. But I guess hosing and sanitizing them down each morning by the city and having the businesses do their part by cleaning up their generated trash would be something. If you think the citizens are going to clean up after these city-generated bums, dream on.” ✆ “The problem of the alleys is as simple as this: If the junk in the alleys belongs to one of the businesses, make them pay a fine. If it’s stuff from the bums — like they’re going to the bathroom on the ground — make the bums clean it up and then take it all and dump it on the lawns of the City Council members and the people who go around feeding the bums. Do this enough times and they’ll get the message.” ✆ “For the protection of public health, it should be illegal, at least by local ordinance, to scavenge garbage cans, unless the person is a member of an official charity organization, which should clean and repair discarded items to then distribute the items free to a thrift store, to the same people who currently scavenge. Also, for the same reason, collecting objects for recycling should also be done by official organizations.” ✆ “I live near the alley of 19th St. and Santa Monica Blvd., where a man chooses to defecate against the wall of an eye care center on a regular basis. It’s very difficult to walk home and come to one’s lodging or accommodations when you see large defecation marks against the wall. No one seems to care and no one seems to clean it, and I know there is a solid waste sanitation man who is a supervisor and drives around to monitor the overflowing garbage, but who takes care of things like this? Please scrub the wall by the eye care center across from the hotel, where hotel guests can see from their lodgings poop marks against the wall.” ✆ “One of the biggest problems I see is on the sidewalks, especially Mid-City. The problem is the homeless people who live on the sidewalks create these large black patches which are filthy and no one cleans up. Santa Monica insisted to not use water on the sidewalk, so only the most fastidious businesses — in very early morning or when no one is looking on the weekend — scrub their sidewalks.” ✆ “We need to make the law to monitor the alleys the same way as parking meters, and it’s the businesses’ responsibilities to keep it clean and beautiful and take (the responsibilities) not only for the front, but all around. Give the businesses three warning citations, then on the fourth time, give them a fine.” ✆ “To better monitor and ensure the cleanliness and safety of this alleyway, and it’s all around the transit mall, the city should continue what they’re doing — of a European design and install cameras. In England, every corner has a camera, so they are watching what you’re doing. This way, we can find out what transient or bum is defecating and have them cited.” ✆ “You have to do what private homeowners do. You have to close the alley to pedestrian and auto traffic by building a gate itself at each entrance. When trash pickup or delivery trucks need to use the alley, a person should be at one gate in order to allow them to come in and unlock that gate so they can deliver their goods and pick up their trash. Paying a daytime person to be in charge of this gate would cost a lot less than having workers constantly cleaning the debris, filth, etc., that accumulates in these alleys and is an unending problem.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 16, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/101604.pdf?ref=smdp.com)