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# Forget about the ‘haves’already
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/forget-about-the-havesalready-editor/
- Published: 2006-07-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T18:49:15.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Lori Emerson Santa Monica*

In response to the letter from Stephen Baker (SMDP, July 6, page 4): Wow, what a great letter! Mr. Baker gets the high five from me. Hopefully, more and more concerned and victimized citizens will write to the SMDP, sharing their scary, bizarre and common experiences. Kudos to you, Stephen Baker. I thought I might try to answer some of Stephen’s relevant questions.

The homeless population is getting worse and worse because our City Council wants all of them here. They actually want more of them to come here. You see Stephen, all of the homeless create a voter base — along with Santa Monicans For Renters Rights and the low-income housing boom — that keeps our City Council members both in office and in their rent-controlled apartments.

Keeping the homeless here allows them to punish property and business owners (aka “the haves”) by spending the hard-earned tax dollars of the “haves” on the “have nots.”

The reason you can’t find, use or stand to use a bench on the Promenade is because the City Council won’t allow the police to enforce vagrancy laws that would allow store customers (the “haves”) to rest between spending store to store. The fact that the city is losing sales tax revenue means nothing to the City Council. All they care about is keeping their cushy chairs in the bowels of City Hall and voting in the middle of the night to put developers out of business by requiring that they give a third of their investments away to the “have nots.”

Yes, your taxes do pay for buildings and services, but that doesn’t mean a thing. The homeless come first. The City Council wants your money but they don’t care a bit about keeping you safe, your children safe or your property safe. Several of our City Council members don’t even own property here, they have no vested financial stake whatsoever in this community, yet they have the power to ruin your quality of life, ruin your property values and steal your investments and you can’t do a thing about it.

The City Council and the police don’t give a rats behind about protecting private property, be it shopping carts, vehicles, carports, garages, yards, etc. They care about the homeless stealing from each other, and taking a detailed report of the same, but they can’t be bothered with reports of vandalism, public urination, bomb threats, batteries and assaults, etc.As long as the homeless come out on top, that’s the goal. Simple as that. I don’t know what’s up with the incompetent police dispatchers Stephen, but we all still have to call the police every time we see a crime committed by a bum. Eventually, maybe someone will tally up all the police reports and publish a truthful total of what the homeless are actually costing our city.

And finally Stephen, you should be used to the smell of urine, the mumblings and threats of the crazies and being assaulted. That’s what one gets for their million-dollar plus property investment here.

The city leaders want people pissing in your yard, threatening you and your family and making it impossible to picnic in a park. That's what they must want, because that's the way it is here. City leaders want everyone to be sickened when at the Promenade or anywhere public — that way, if you are a bleeding heart liberal or a Section 8 rent control recipient in this town, you will feel sorry for the homeless and re-elect the incumbent morons who sit on the City Council, promising to fix the problem while actually making it worse.

If it makes you feel any better, Stephen, you are not alone. Your frustration is my frustration, is my family’s frustration and is my neighbor’s frustration.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 10, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071006.pdf?ref=smdp.com)