“Do you feel City Hall’s efforts have made a positive difference here? Why or why not?”
Here are your responses: ■ “City Hall — mainly the City Council — has not done one thing to make a positive difference in Santa Monica. I’m speaking mainly about the downtown area, because that’s where the homeless hang out. They’re still sleeping on Wilshire Boulevard. I counted five of them on Monday morning. They’re still lounging along the Promenade. They’re still in the park, still urinating in the alleys, and the SMDP still has this nut — Charles Springer — writing articles about homelessness and blaming everyone else. These people could clean up their acts. Santa Monica spends too much money. If Santa Monica thinks that the other cities (mainly West Hollywood, Culver City and Beverly Hills) are going to help them with the homeless problem, they have marbles for brains. Some of these City Council members have marbles for brains and they take them out when they don’t have anything to do.” ■ “I don’t think the city has made any positive effort at all to make a positive difference here because it does too much to help the homeless. You can’t even walk five feet down the Promenade without someone asking you for money. All those people sitting around on the Promenade who do not want to work and who are filthy and dirty should not be taken care of by the city because the efforts have not helped anyone.” ■ “I don’t feel City Hall has made a positive difference. As a matter of fact, they’ve had a negative influence, based on the fact that the word gets out among the homeless that Santa Monica is their heaven on earth. There isn’t a thing that they can’t get here for free, and they roam the streets with impunity. The police won’t pick them up, the weather is terrific and nobody bothers them. They bother a lot of people, but no one bothers them. This is a situation that won’t improve, and will only get worse, while City Hall spends money needlessly to control vagrancy.
The easiest thing to do would be to pick them up and give them a one-way bus ticket to wherever they came from. Most of these people are out-of-towners. All they do, anyway, is hop on the buses and, for $1.50, come out to Santa Monica and park themselves. This must cease. City Hall, the city manager and City Council pay no attention to the people. This has been going on for decades. It’s time for the city to clean up its act and get it together.” ■ “City Hall’s efforts in response to the growing vagrant population have done nothing but permit the situation to get worse. I think that the team that recently went to England to drum up tourism for this city had a lot of nerve. Who in their right mind would want to come and walk around in the dangerous, dirty, slum-like Santa Monica area.” ■ “There are people who live in Santa Monica who are homeless and professionals at it. They’ve been professionals at it for the last 10 or 15 years. If they really wanted to stop being homeless, they would have found a job a long time ago. These people always have their hand out for spare change, they get freebies from local organizations, and a lot of these people are probably also receiving social security or veteran benefits. This, I believe, is a crime. I walked down one block on the Promenade and there were eight (homeless) people sitting on the benches. On one block along Wilshire Boulevard there were three people sleeping. Some of the homeless even have cell phones now. If you can afford a cell phone, you can afford a room or something. Where do they get this money? The City Council needs to come down to earth and realize that many of the homeless do not want to be saved. The other cities are smart — they don’t want any part of the mess that Santa Monica has created for itself. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
On another note, SMDP keeps printing articles by the homeless Charles Springer, who blames the homeless problem on everyone else. He needs to go get his act together and go get a job. I suspect that he is getting money from somewhere.” ■ “I think City Hall has made a positive difference for a few individuals — 100, perhaps, have gotten off the streets and found jobs. At the same time, I believe they have made a negative impact because the residents have to suffer the impact of increased numbers of homeless here because it’s a free ride and a nice place to live. Unfortunately, by allowing felons, drug addicts and crazy people to run free on the streets, the people who pay to live here suffer. When I add it up I see a lot of people’s lives worse and a few people’s lives better. So I say it’s a complete failure.” ■ “I feel the City Hall doesn’t do enough for the homeless. If they could sell some of the very expensive land in Santa Monica and, with that money, buy land out in the desert and build homes and one mental hospital, and have them learn a trade, it would be better for everybody. Many other towns like Culver City and Beverly Hills have no homeless problem. I don’t know what they do, but they have no one in their streets. We in Santa Monica need cleaner streets or we will lose our tourists.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2003. Read the original PDF.