City looking into laws that care for homeless
CITY HALL — City Council approved changes in the city’s homeless service efforts on Tuesday, despite community concerns that new strategies to fight homelessness could actually make matters worse for the down-and-out.
After hearing from a number of community groups, councilmem-bers decided to accept staff’s extensive annual review of its homeless fighting efforts, which outlines goals for next year.
As a result, a number of changes will soon be underway regarding the city’s homeless pro-gramming, including more resources dedicated to the chronically homeless population — a group believed to cause the biggest drain on social service resources, and yet, continue to who have the most trouble getting back on their feet.
In particular, an additional $254,000 will be spent on the city’s chronic homeless project, bringing City Hall’s annual expenses on its homeless-related services to just over $2 million.
Two dozen speakers, many of them representing local social service providers, suggested that renewed focus on serving the chronically homeless would only be successful as long as other types of homeless individuals received comparable support.
“I want to make sure we’re not creating a separate set of problems in which someone has to sink so low to become chronically homeless before they’re able to receive services,” said John Maceri, executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, a non-profit group which helps the homeless. “You shouldn’t underestimate the resources it will take to get these people housed.”
Maceri said one of the best ways to fight homelessness was to prevent it in the first place, a strategy he feels shouldn’t be neglected as the city aims to overhaul its pro-gramming in coming months. Maceri referred to families and individuals who may be verging on becoming homeless and for whom a little help could go a long way in making sure they have a roof over their head.
“We need to be keeping an eye out for eviction prevention,” Maceri said. “The sooner we make an intervention (in the homelessness process), the faster we can get them housed again.”
The point was well-taken by coun-cilmembers. Still, a growing frustration with the numerous homeless individuals living on Santa Monica’s streets have prompted some, such as City Councilman Bobby Shriver, to advocate a position that more must be done to address the homeless problem, because what’s being done now simply doesn’t seem to be working.
“I’m still cross about the lack of progress,” Shriver said. “It’s outrageous. There are 91,000 homeless people living in Los Angeles, and it’s the policemen who are administering the largest mental hospital — county jail.
“There needs to be a homeless law to force cities to pay their fair share to make sure these people can get off the streets.”
Shriver said he supported paying more attention to the chronically homeless population because that’s what the public wants him to do.
The feasibility of Shriver’s idea to create a legislative proposal that would require cities to do a better job providing for their homeless populations will be investigated by City Hall.
City Councilman Richard Bloom said that despite the setbacks to solving the homeless problem, there’s also hope in that it’s starting to become better addressed on a regional level.
Bloom said staff’s report comes on the heels of recent regional awareness being brought to the homeless debate. Recent news reports have drawn attention to homelessness at a time when all of Los Angeles is becoming galvanized by the issue.
“The people and institutions of Los Angeles are paying more attention to homelessness and are starting to act on the issue,” Bloom said. “Santa Monica is considered one of the pre-eminent leaders on homelessness in the country, but we can’t solve the problem alone.”
City Councilman Kevin McKeown added that a bigger community effort was also needed to fight homelessness.
“It’s a good time for people to ask themselves what they can do to help,” McKeown said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 15, 2005. Read the original PDF.