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# City Hall must approach homelessness more effectively
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-must-approach-homelessness-more-effectively/
- Published: 2003-11-03T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:09:34.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*FROM THE STREET*

*By Charles Springer*

I went to the City Council meeting last week for the annual review of homeless services. I listened as the City Manager of Human Services read the list of how many people were helped and how well the system was running. What disturbed me was this city agency is still using the 1999 census of how many homeless there are in the city and county.

I know from observation that the homeless population has increased. The new faces I see even from other parts of the county and other cities outside the state prove this. I have been on the streets long enough to know most everyone who drifts in and out of the city, as well as who is new out here on the streets of Santa Monica.

Since our beloved emperor, I mean, President Bush took office in 2000 there has been an increase in the homeless population due to many different factors. It’s mostly because of the downsizings within the corporate structure and exodus of jobs out of the country, as well as the increase in rents in Los Angeles County, the loss of rent control in Santa Monica, and the cuts in social services on the state and federal level.

How can you expect to solve a problem you know exists if you don’t have all the updated data? If this were a cooperation and this was about profits, all the data would have been updated to ensure the information is correct. And the problem would have been solved. If this was a military operation and we didn’t have updated data, people would lose their lives and we would lose the battle. This is happening in Iraq right now.

But about the homeless... a problem people blame for everything from loss of profits to loss of tourism to the urine smell on the Promenade. Which, by the way, is not the homeless urinating there but the type of trees that are there, which, when they bloom and the flowers fall on the ground, smell of urine, according to city workers.

The truth of the matter is the lack of updated information on the homeless population and the blind eye towards getting this information is part of the cause of the whole system being clogged. There also is the rise of inflation and price increases to be considered as well.

I’m not saying that this city does nothing to help our plight on the streets, but a new county wide census would help in updating the system. It would give the agencies more information to work with, would better facilitate the fund raising efforts and would help to show our elected officials how bad the homeless situation really is.

There also was the telling of the City Council that the two thirds of us are either mentally ill or chronically addicted. The homeless population is a concentrated view of society as a whole. In other words, what you see on the streets you can see in your own neighborhoods in a more diluted form.

Those who are addicts and severely mentally ill need to be addressed first and foremost. The mentally ill need to be put back into facilities where they can receive the care and attention they need. With the chronically addicted, there needs to be more facilities to treat chemical addictions and detoxes. Most of the recovery facilities do not even let the chemically addicted in. The CLARE Foundation is a prime example. My sponsor has put heroin and speed addicts in there and as soon as they find out they are not alcohol abusers they put them out. And they begin the cycle all over again — this time they become resistant to any type of recovery having been rejected by the recovery community. This leads to the anti-social behavior that is one of the major complaints of the housed residents of Santa Monica.

Another thing I see which is wrong with this picture is we as a whole community have to begin to work together to solve this problem of homelessness. We have to communicate with each other and the leaders within the homeless community to the neighborhood leaders, all the way to the top in City Hall. We have to stop the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. We have to stop the bickering and name calling and use our energy in a positive light. The homeless agencies — for all that is good and bad about them — are all we have to stand against the tide of homelessness in this city. If we do not start to communicate and look at all avenues to solve this problem then the problem will only get worse.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 3, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110303.pdf?ref=smdp.com)