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# City to hire liaison for homeless
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-to-hire-liaison-for-homeless-2/
- Published: 2005-04-29T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:50:03.000Z
- Author: Ryan Hyatt
- Tags: Community, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*Shriver takes his first big step on council*

CITY HALL — Elected officials here plan to hire a high-profile liaison with a salary of as much as $200,000 and whose sole purpose will be to solve the problem of chronic homelessness in the region.

In a 4-2 vote, the City Council on Tuesday approved the hiring of what it hopes will be a consensus-building leader to enlist nearby communities and find more resources to effectively address homelessness on the Westside.

Councilmen Robert Holbrook, Herb Katz, Kevin McKeown and Bobby Shriver voted in favor of creating the new position. Mayor Pam O’Connor and Councilman Richard Bloom voted against it. Councilman Ken Genser was absent from the meeting.

“Some person needs to be able to make this (issue of homelessness) their 24/7 business, working on this issue on a regional basis,” said Shriver, who suggested the new position. “When you undertake a big project, you need someone who eats, sleeps, breathes this kind of issue.”

> “When you undertake a big project, you need someone who eats, sleeps, breathes this kind of issue.” — BOBBY SHRIVER Councilman

Citing the need for the regional liaison, Shriver pointed out that $10,000 contributed by Santa Monica last month to secure a lease for a sobering center site at 1000 Venice Blvd. fell through. Julie Rusk, the city’s one full-time local homeless assistance coordinator, said the sobering center fell through because residents living near the site were opposed to it after reading about the proposal in the newspaper. She said Santa Monica’s partner in the program, Exodus Recovery, a nonprofit rehabilitation and treatment group, is considering other locations for the center.

The regional liaison will be hired on a contractual basis, and the position’s effectiveness will be reviewed after a year, Shriver said. The person will likely be hired for one year, paid as much as $200,000 and will report his or her results directly to City Manager Susan McCarthy. The regional liaison would be responsible for advancing programs such as the sobering center, a mental health and drug court, year-round housing through the Veterans Administration, and chronic homeless outreach.

Only a handful of top administrators get paid between $100,000 and $200,000 within City Hall. Santa Monica spends about $2 million a year on its homeless social-service programs, and officials discussed that the liaison’s salary could come from that budget.

Shriver also suggested a City Council ad hoc committee be created to help oversee the liaison’s efforts.

The mayor and city councilmembers each expressed an interest in the need for a regional homeless liaison, but some differed on how the position should be approached. Councilman Bloom, who has long advocated for social-service programs for the homeless, voted against the new position because he said the person filling it needed to be appointed from a regional level.

“Santa Monica is seen as doing everything right (on this issue),” Bloom said. “What’s wrong is that other cities are not following suit. What we need is a galvanizing force for a regional approach. My concern is that having a Santa Monica staff member to coordinate between Beverly Hills and Culver City to cooperate on these issues would backfire.”

Bloom said a more appropriate body to choose the regional liaison would be Bring L.A. Home, a group representing 84 jurisdictions charged with ending homelessness in the Los Angeles area within a decade.

However, some councilmembers were skeptical of leaving the task up to a bureaucratic body. Councilman Holbrook, who has supported a homeless funding services cap in the past, supported the new position because he felt a well-respected and admired leader could better coordinate homeless efforts with more effective regional results.

“I agree the homeless population needs immediate and intensive attention,” Holbrook said. “To try figuring out the sharing of responsibilities and solutions, I feel like we need to do something new. Although other cities may feel we are handling (the homeless issue), if you ask Santa Monica residents, they’ll tell you we are not doing it right. We need to have somebody with charisma. Bring L.A. Home... who is running that, does anybody know?”

Shriver said homelessness was one of the key issues he ran on during his campaign last fall, but since being elected it has been difficult to do much about the issue, mostly because of the lack of a regional liaison to address the problem.

“People have been coming up to me in the streets, saying, ‘What are you doing about the homeless? You’re a bum,’” said Shriver, who works full time as a philanthropist. “This is the third discussion we’ve had about this issue in the last five months. It’s always bumped to one of the last agenda items. People are looking for a leader on this issue. There is an appetite to do regional things, a go-to person. If (former White House Chief of Staff) Leon Panetta were available, I’d ask him.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 29, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/042905.pdf?ref=smdp.com)