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# City still pays dearly
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-still-pays-dearly/
- Published: 2006-08-07T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:33:40.000Z
- Author: Bill Bauer
- Tags: Opinion, Montana, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

People get worked up when I write about Santa Monica’s homeless problems.

My e-mail inbox had a couple of communications from “homeless” persons who told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. On the other end of the social and economic spectrum, north of Montana Avenue homeowner Jean Sedillos agreed with them in her letter to the editor (SMPD, July 25, page 4).

Sedillos was right about some of the $1.2 million allocated by the city for the new homeless court and housing for chronically homeless and chronically homeless inebriates as coming from a $948,907 federal HUD grant awarded late in 2005\. However, I still say city funding for services is dramatically increasing.

This year, more than $2 million has been allocated for direct services to nine city-subsidized agencies. An extra $200,000 was recently approved for the St. Joseph Center and for a public opinion survey on the effectiveness of homeless services. An additional $5,670, 895 was approved by City Council on May 9 to build a new access center for OPCC, a city-subsidized provider of homeless services.

I’ve been volunteering for seven years for the Santa Monica Police Department’s Homeless Liaison Program (HLP) and have gone on numerous ride-alongs with HLP team officers. My experiences provide a realistic perspective of what really happens street level and on what seems to work and what doesn’t.

While I speak for myself, and not for the SMPD in any way, it’s been my observation that many programs seem to be counterpro-ductive because they either ignore or reward destructive behavior mainly because there is no mechanism for recourse if people who are directed to social services don’t stop abusing alcohol and drugs or give up a “street” lifestyle. Helping is an honorable thing to do, but ultimately, I believe that people must take some responsibility for their own actions.

Excuse my cynicism but it appears that the “housing first” models have the potential to reward and sustain destructive habits because in spite of “swamping them with casework,” there is no downside of losing the housing benefit. I feel that special homeless courts are special treatment. Everyone has to travel to the Airport Courthouse near LAX for court except vagrants and transients whose cases will be heard in Santa Monica.

Then, there’s the almost automatic dismissal of citations for most misdemeanors such as public intoxication, stolen property (shopping carts), public urination and defecation, etc. If the system were to give the same extraordinary courtesy to celebrities instead of vagrants, liberals like Sedillos would probably scream bloody murder. Maybe I’m wrong, but this sure doesn’t seem like “equal treatment under the law” to me.

Sedillos claims that “housing first,” homeless courts and similar programs work. I pray that Sedillos, who is a member of City Councilman Bobby Shriver’s “kitchen cabinet,” is right.

As for Sedillos’ claim that I “haven’t ever suggested one course of action that will be effective (in reducing homelessness),” I can only respond that all that Reddi-wip she’d been eating gave her brain freeze.

Prior to the 2004 election, we talked for hours about homelessness and other issues in her living room. Over the years, I’ve written dozens of columns suggesting ways services could be more efficient while not making it easy for persons to live on the street.

I’ve written two recent columns supporting housing homeless veterans at the West LA Veteran’s Administration. Those who really want and need services must get them.

City Hall must change its desire to solve the region’s homeless problems and concentrate on long-range goals of reducing the number of transients on Santa Monica streets by, say, 25 percent over the next three years. Programs must be result-driven. They’re not, which is why it took 20 years to evaluate the effectiveness of the “continuum of misery” as the homeless themselves call it.

I don’t want to close down all services, just ones that enable transients and vagrants to exist in misery on our streets for decades. Part of the equation must be to adopt a zero tolerance for malingerers, scammers, free-loaders, drunks and addicts who abuse the system, and lawbreakers who thumb their nose at programs, the law and civility.

I think Jean and I are on the same page. We all bring something to the table. Wouldn’t everyone’s time be better spent solving problems than criticizing other persons for their opinions on the best way to get people back into productive society? (Bill Bauer)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 7, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080706.pdf?ref=smdp.com)