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# Give the people what they want
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/give-the-people-what-they-want/
- Published: 2005-04-16T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:39:43.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica Airport, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

This past week, Q-line asked: “What’s on your mind? What is the biggest issue facing Santa Monica and how should it be handled?”

Here are your responses: ✆ “The biggest issue facing Santa Monica is homelessness and the best way to address the issue in town is to use the area which was known as the Santa Monica Police Department building. Demolish it, and put all the regional programs that city staff recommends in their backyard, 10 stories tall. Take all the regional programs away from our schools, all of our senior buildings — which they put these regional programs next to — and out of the Pico neighborhood. And put it behind City Hall so all the wonderful city staff that recommend these programs can enjoy giving community services and community assistance directly to the homeless. As a matter of fact, on the first floor they could have Step Up on Second Street catering firm and cafeteria to help feed the city staff — I think it would be a marvelous solution to the problem of homelessness.” ✆ “Is it all quiet around the city? I don’t think so, ambulances and para-medics are roaring around all day long, early and late, picking up assorted bums with assorted problems. These vagrants and homeless and crazies still clutter our streets and parks and make life unbearable for the tax-paying citizens. Shoplifting in our local stores is at an all-time high, making it very difficult and dangerous for our shop and market people. The traffic and parking mess simmers along with its horrible daily toll on drivers and pedestrians. How should this issue be handled? Get rid of the mayor and current City Council.” ✆ “As a daily reader of the Santa Monica Daily Press, I find this week’s question to be redundant so I will not comment on the question directly. However, I will predict the comments that will be submitted by other readers as follows: Traffic congestion, pollution, overcrowding, homelessness, homelessness feeding in the park, Heal the Bay, fair working wages, pro-rent control, and anti-rent control, tenant harassment, automobile gas prices, airport noise, parking woes, Santa Monica school district, dirty sidewalks, Third Street Promenade problems, Santa Monica Place demolition, and no to high-rise buildings. I could go on and on and on, but I will not.” ✆ “Yes, I think in this world-renowned town of Santa Monica we should have more pedestrian friendly restaurants and businesses on the sidewalk, like in Europe. All right? And less homeless people — more programs to get the homeless off of the street also.” ✆ “What’s on my mind is “The Simpsons” and how it relates to Santa Monica: The cops of Santa Monica are a lot more efficient and honest than Chief Wiggum in the Springfield police, but the bums are a lot worse than Barney, the town drunk in Springfield. It seems like we’ve got Homer Simpson running the traffic in Santa Monica, because those idiots — whoever is doing it — are a bunch of incompetents like Homer Simpson. And as far as the City Council is concerned, well we’ve got a bunch of buffoons like Krusty the Clown. At least Krusty the clown is funny.” ✆ “The quality of life, the dismal failure of the City Council to correct its own problems: Traffic, parking, bums, low-income housing — which is just another form of bum-hood, people who are lazy and refuse to work out their own problems, and the majority of who aren’t even from Santa Monica, but it’s a great voting block — the sprawl of condominiums, the excessive spending by City Hall, a police department building that’s twice its original cost; $70 million for a library that looks like a prison; $120 million for a Rand property which is more low-income housing, and business and retail stores of dubious quality. Santa Monica Place — I went to a meeting, what a dog and pony show that was, the developers are salivating to build condos and low-income housing. The noise in this town from motorcycles, cars, stereos, helicopters — try sitting at the beach when they fly overhead. The jets at the airport — our leaders have managed to do something I never thought I would see in Santa Monica, and that is to take a beautiful and simple beach town and turn it into an ugly mini-East Coast metropolis with its intended socialistic value and liberal progressive ideas and people.” ✆ “The towering issue, of course to me, is the homeless one. I think the government needs to pass less laws restricting the freedom of the non-homeless, and pass more laws restricting the freedom of the homeless who are such eyesores in this town and who walk up and down the streets and alleyways going through the trash and screaming and yelling at all hours of the night. Again, the word has to get out that this is not a homeless friendly place to be. A corner has to be turned and the overall message has to change. The government has to find other things to make themselves feel good other than helping the poor and bringing them all here.” ✆ “The biggest issue is the city’s lack of concern about what the residents want. We do not want to be medicated with the toxic fluoridation substance containing arsenic and led in our water supply. We do not want to be bombarded by microwaves from an antenna tower. We do not want the shopping center torn down — disrupting that area for years, and winding up with more congestion, traffic and tall towers. We want to see real solutions to the homeless and gang problems.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 16, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041605.pdf?ref=smdp.com)