But council members heed resident concerns and alter the project
A homeless shelter will be built at Cloverfield Boulevard and Michigan Avenue, though it won’t feature all the components originally envisioned by the area’s largest provider of social services.
After a marathon, seven-hour meeting that stretched into the early morning hours Wednesday, the City Council voted 5-1 to give $7.4 million to the Ocean Park Community Center to buy and renovate the building that will become the shelter.
However, council members decided to spend the $1.8 million that the Big Blue Bus will pay for displacing OPCC, to separate the center’s daytime services from its nighttime services by moving them to a new location near the spot of the current shelter.
The deal represents a compromise over an earlier city proposal that drew fire from a handful of neighborhood groups and failed to attain the endorsement of the city’s Social Services Commission, which oversees homeless issues.
That proposal called for using the 33,700-square-foot property, located at 1751 Cloverfield Blvd., to house 55 homeless people per night and provide services to 250 more during the day.
Under the compromise, the Cloverfield shelter will only be used to house the people per night. Council members asked city staff to examine a different location on the Big Blue Bus site where the daytime facilities could be housed and explore the possibility of building affordable housing on the Cloverfield Boulevard site.
3DA,OPCC must move from its current location at 612 Colorado Ave. because the Big Blue Bus, which is housed in the same building, is expanding. In July, OPCC entered into escrow on the $5 million Cloverfield property, which needs several million dollars more in upgrades.
Hundreds of people packed the council chambers and spilled out into City Hall’s corridors on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, waiting to comment on the proposal.
“This is not about anti-homeless sentiments or being against needed services,” said Anna Hara, who lives at 1925 Cloverfield Blvd. “It is not against OPCC. This is not an issue about in my back yard or in your back yard.
“This is about decades of a strategic pattern that has affected thousands of families, including mine.”
Hara echoed the sentiments of many nearby residents, homeowners, landlords and businesses who said putting the shelter in the Pico neighborhood is unfair because it already has more than its share of social service agencies.
Dozens of OPCC counselors, clients and supporters also addressed council members. They urged the council to provide the funding and said OPCC does an excellent job at providing a much-needed service.
“I’m concerned tonight for the residents of Santa Monica, the ones who are housed and the ones who are not,” said the Rev. Sandie Richards, minister of the Church in Ocean Park. “Those who are housed have concerns about safety and hygiene. Those who are not have the very same concerns though perhaps from a different perspective.
“Change is hard, precisely because we can’t see into the future and say with absolute certainty what will happen,” she added. “So I’m asking my fellow Santa Monicans to take a calculated risk.”
As another part of the new compromise, City Hall will hold onto the deed and lease it to the social services agency instead of OPCC owning the property. Bob Moncrief, the city’s housing manager, said lease payments may not be made in monetary form.
“We’ll work backwards from what they can afford,” he said. “For example, if their rent payments could be better used to purchase a van to do outreach, that might be of more value to us than rent.”
The financing of the deal was also tweaked by council members, though the final bill to City Hall will be the same — about $9.2 million. OPCC has attained $400,000 from LA County mental health and housing funds and has applied for $900,000 in state and federal housing money. In addition, OPCC director John Maceri said the shelter will still have to raise $800,000 on its own.
4C0,“We’re looking forward to working with the community and figuring out what’s going to be developed on that site,” Maceri said. “I’m happy that the smear campaign that was launched against the project in the end didn’t win out.”
City staff are expected to return on Sept. 23 with information about a new site for the daytime services, as well as a proposed lease agreement with OPCC.
Councilman Bob Holbrook, the lone dissenting vote, said he felt the project was stampeded through City Hall without giving neighbors and businesses a chance to discuss it in depth. He said he found out about the project at the last minute, despite the fact that staff had been in negotiations for months.
Holbrook added that he would have liked to see the money be used to purchase apartment buildings for low-income use, rather than go toward a homeless shelter.
“What really saddened me was this really was a stealth mission,” Holbrook said. “I never thought I had to look over my shoulder as a council member. It’s a strange deal.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 14, 2003. Read the original PDF.