This past week, Q-line asked: How can Santa Monica better address the issue of homelessness here and throughout the country?
Here are your responses: ✆ “Logistics are the key for the homeless problem and logistics are all important. Right now we pay millions of dollars to social service agencies but get nothing in results. The sobriquet homeless is a loose definition of people without a roof over their heads. Usually people have to work to keep a roof over the heads, but obviously not in Santa Monica where homelessness is on automatic pilot. Logistics are key to the solution to the problem. And getting the biggest bang for the buck is also part of the solution. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan cut all financial support for mental institutions in the United States. The states closed most of their facilities for the mentally ill for lack of federal funding. So logistically, do a four-step processing of homeless on the streets. Step number one: Pick them up and take them to the processing center (e.g. 7th and Colorado, or another building, e.g. the old jail house). Step number two: City personnel should ascertain who is fit to work and who needs a mental health institution and who needs sobriety treatment. Step number three: The Los Angeles county and cities should hire part-time employees from the fit to work, assigning simple chores. The mentally ill should go directly to newly opened mental institutions. The sobering up crowd should be given part-time work by the cities in Los Angeles County. Step number four: The people in the above categories should be given bed vouchers as part of their work, except for the mentally ill. Sound simple? It is. Just do it.” ✆ “The city of Santa Monica is only the recipient of homelessness and not the cause of homelessness. Homelessness is the responsibility of the federal government of the people to establish a program that will help local municipalities in their effort to aid and redirect their homeless population. Showers, haircuts, clothing, and food would be a good start. Unfortunately, our federal bureaucrats and politicians do not have time to consider the problems of the homelessness. They are too busy servicing the special interest who sponsored them for office. The money spent on the last presidential election inauguration would solve Santa Monica’s homeless problem until doomsday. Still, my suggestion would be that we drain the Pacific Ocean from the Santa Monica Bay area, tear down the pier, and close down the Third Street Promenade, Palisades Park and the bike path and finally block access to the 10 Freeway. No self-respecting homeless person or anyone else would want to hang out in Santa Monica after that.” ✆ “For years Santa Monica has permitted this homeless vagrant population to grow unabated. The few agencies which would have been adequate for local people and problems are now totally overwhelmed. Santa Monica itself has created this monster. All these feeding and donation programs that come in from out of this area are worsening the problem by the day. We have one gigantic skid row population. I was infuriated at the picture of the homeless with their bags of goodies in front of City Hall (SMDP, Jan. 24, page 1). Let that church hire a couple of buses and bring these people to Manhattan Beach and decrease our surplus population. And that goes for all the rest of the out of the area do-gooders. Our situation here in Santa Monica is unmanageable the way it is now.” ✆ “One thing that strikes me immediately was on the Monday, Jan. 24 cover of the Daily Press, you mentioned that the Manhattan Beach Catholic Church was giving out food to the Santa Monica homeless people. Well, that’s very admirable. Wouldn’t they be better off giving it to the homeless in Manhattan Beach? And, therefore, maybe keeping some of the homeless in Manhattan Beach. Its a win-win situation for them.” ✆ “Yes, years ago I was captain of a homeless feeding program in Palisades Park, it was quite an interesting thing. But I think we do a bit too much for the homeless and I think it should be spread around to other cities. Because we’re almost this homeless capital of southern California.” ✆ “The main lifeblood of the homeless in Santa Monica is not the public feedings, it’s the trash cans in the alleyways. And if the city passed an ordinance requiring locks on all the trash cans across the board, which is a very simple thing to do, my prediction is that homelessness in Santa Monica would go down 50 percent. I appreciate the forum here.” ✆ “The main thing that will get rid of the bum problem in Santa Monica is to enforce all the laws. If there’s a bum with a shopping cart, arrest him. If there’s a bum loitering in the park or going to the bathroom in public, arrest him. And if the jail won’t keep them, put them on a chaingang or something, force them to work. Sans the bum feedings, enforce the laws. If they aren’t allowed to feed the bums in public, confiscate the food, give it to the food banks. The only thing that some of these bums will understand is a knock on the head. One time I was walking along on about 20 feet behind a guy — this was in Venice — he walked past this bum. The bum wanted some money, the guy kept walking, the bum spit on him. The guy turned around and decked the bum and knocked him down, then kept on walking. That bum probably won’t spit on people again. That’s how you teach these people. They take over the parks, take over the Promenade, they stink it up, something has to be done.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 29, 2005. Read the original PDF.