The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has released the latest local homeless count, and it’s not good news for Santa Monica.
LAHSA’s count, conducted in January, 2005, estimates that 1,991 homeless individuals are on Santa Monica’s streets on any given night — up from the 1,037 individuals counted by the City of Santa Monica in late October, 1999, and the 1,000 to 1,500 estimated by the City in its 1991 report, “The Santa Monica Task Force on Homelessness: A Call to Action.”
LAHSA, an authority formed to address the problems of homelessness on a regional basis, directly counted 1,192 persons in shelters and on the streets in Santa Monica. LAHSA projected 799 more uncounted persons in jails, hospitals or rehabilitation facilities, and in nine of 19 Santa Monica census tracts which, when added to the actual count, totals 1,991 persons. On an annual basis, LAHSA says there are about 4,321 homeless in Santa Monica, based on Service Planning Area turnover rates.
Sources familiar with the count say, “counters often guessed at the numbers of persons in tents and sleeping bags” and did-n’t count “hard-to-reach areas” such as the bluffs, which are home for many transients.
Whatever the shortcomings, LAHSA’s count reveals a 92-percent increase here in little more than five years. In other words, 2.4 percent of the County’s homeless population are here, but less than 1 percent of its population.
In SPA 5, which comprises Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu, Beverly Hills, the Pico-Beverly area, West Los Angeles, Marina del Rey and Westchester, 29 percent of the homeless are in Santa Monica, yet the city comprises only just 14 percent of the SPA’s population.
We have many more “homeless” than surrounding communities on a per capita basis. Their number has nearly doubled in five years and 3 months. It’s inescapable — Santa Monica has indeed become a magnet for vagrants and transients.
While policymakers in City Hall say beach, climate and freeway proximity make our city attractive to vagrants and transients, they ignore the draw of nine homeless service agencies and a $2 million homeless services budget.
Food handouts in parks have declined in recent years, however, there is still plenty of free food to entice and keep ‘em here. And where other cities’ police departments pressure the homeless “to get out of Dodge,” ours uses a more humanitarian approach.
Over the last year, the city has implemented a host of new services, including a program to find housing for chronically homeless inebriates. (See SMDP, Jan. 9, 2006, Page 4) The city has added more staff in homeless services and hired former Los Angles County Supervisor Ed Edelman to work with surrounding communities to “find regional solutions to homeless problems.” I wish Mr. Edelman luck, but I predict he won’t find another community that will assume the burden we have.
Direct services, fire, paramedics, police and other expenses cost us, perhaps, $20 million or more each year. Unfortunately, LAHSA’s count vividly demonstrates that all our efforts and money have neither reduced the number of homeless here nor their financial drain.
Failed policies have turned our community into “the home of the homeless.” Perhaps unwittingly, we’re providing a comfort zone that other communities are not. That’s why they’re here in record numbers.
So, where does it all end? Our “homeless” policy is going in the wrong direction. There’s no goal or plan to reduce the number of vagrants and transients on our streets. Instead, we’re attempting to solve the problem of “homelessness” by providing amenities such as free housing for chronic alcoholics or long-term street vagrants. But isn’t this really just giving street drunks and transients free housing so they can spend more time and money on drugs and drink? The liquor stores must be ecstatic.
I guess if they’re in subsidized housing, technically, they’re no longer “homeless.” But we’ll still have the criminals, the mentally ill, the drug and alcohol addicted among us, who will continue to abuse our generosity, cause problems and squander resources that should be going to schools, minority youth, seniors, parks and our needs.
Wanna bet the family Prius that by the next “homeless” count, we’ll have even more here and signed up on our “freebie” list? (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 20, 2006. Read the original PDF.