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# Majority wants public feedings to end
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/majority-wants-public-feedings-to-end/
- Published: 2002-07-26T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:34:12.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Community, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

Here are your responses to this week’s question: “Do you agree the city should do more to limit the size and frequency of public feedings? Or do you believe there are better ways the city can address its homeless problem downtown?” ■ “The city should do away with all public feedings, period. All they are doing is contributing to an increasing number of homeless, vagrants, hobos (whatever you want to name them) to come to Santa Monica and eat for free. As far as the feeding in Palisades Park, they’ve made it a mess. What’s ironic is that they have signs that say don’t feed the squirrels, but they feed the bums in the park. It’s unbelievable. Santa Monica has a reputation for being the home of the vagrants. They need to polish their reputation. Look down Wilshire Boulevard! It’s a mess from the homeless throwing crap on the streets, urinating, defecating and you know what else. This should be stopped. I think that the feedings in public places increases the number of homeless people that come into Santa Monica.” ■ “The city should do more to eliminate the feeding of the homeless. They should be fed at the churches. They should open up their doors, not ours. They can pray.” ■ “The homeless might argue that they have no bathrooms, not true. That is the reason they create a stench that almost makes me sick. But here is something which there is no excuse. The trashing of this expensive and once beautiful neighborhood by littering. That is the strewing of trash everywhere. It is outrageous. I think that all of these people should just be run off, and I don’t care a bit what happens to any of them. Feed them? Are you kidding?” ■ “I don’t have much to say about the homeless bums except that I’m sick and tired of looking at them. What I wanted to say is that your newspaper is a breath of fresh air in Santa Monica. It’s a wonderful newspaper, and it always prints the local news. All we have to do now is get rid of these councilmen and vote for another mayor. Anyhow, good luck with your newspaper, and I hope you manage to get rid of those bums. Want to know what I always tell them when they come begging?” ■ “Stop the feeding completely, immediately. If the church members want to continue the feedings, let them use the church halls. They can also put up a big sign in the halls that says ‘No Tipping Please.’” ■ “I think feeding the homeless in the city parks and at City Hall is unacceptable. If the churches want to feed the homeless, they should feed them indoors.” ■ “Stop all the feeding, PERIOD!” ■ “I have a very good solution as an alternative to feeding the homeless in the parks. I think the members of the city council, the city attorney’s office and other officials of the City of Santa Monica, plus the churches, invite all of these derelicts to their homes and feed them on their lawns or in their parking lots. That will get rid of the people in the park, and they will be clean. If they are such Pollyannas and want to feed these people, let them do it on their property. Not in the parks that are used by everyone.” ■ “I think they should ban all public feedings in Santa Monica. This only exacerbates the problem. It only makes it worse.” ■ “I hardly agree that it’s a positive thing to limit public feedings. The churches can do it in their own yards instead of ours.” ■ “The public feedings should not be limited, they should be ended. The alleged homeless, transient, criminals are ruining this town. I would not go near the Third Street Promenade for any money. It’s disgusting. It has to stop now. No more!” ■ “I’m surprised the city council has not called for a funded committee to study the out of control ‘homeless’ problem that they have created themselves. I have nothing but total empathy for the local business owners and residents who are powerless to remove the blight that has scarred this city. Yes, we should not only limit the size and frequency of the public feedings, but in my opinion eliminate them altogether. Let the outside church groups feed the people on their own property. Let’s see how their parishioners react?” ■ “This week’s question is a puzzle to me? Should the City of Santa Monica do this or that about feeding the needy? Regardless if you are rich, poor, young or old, people get hungry. This is the way God made us. Regardless if a person eats from a golden or paper plate in the city park, people get hungry, and this, too, is the way God made us. For anyone to limit the food intake based solely on the fact that they have no place to live, sleep or eat, that person or persons are paying God and whoa unto them. Be thankful that there are people out here who do care that the needy get food. What the hell is wrong with the fat cats in City Hall and around Santa Monica? Put yourself in the poor man’s shoes and see how hungry you get.” ■ “The city should not limit meal programs for hungry people. Every time there is an economic downturn in this city, the homeless become the scapegoats. Homelessness is growing throughout our country, and the only cure is more affordable housing. People should be outraged but not by homeless, rather by homelessness because it indicates the failure of our society to provide for ourselves. We are a society judging from what’s going on in the world today consumed by greed. I think that those of us who want to give charity to people in need are not going to be deterred by laws that say we can’t feed people who are hungry.” ■ “I work at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Santa Monica, and I think the homeless situation is getting out of hand. I helped an elderly gentleman who walks with a very slow gate. He told me he went to a restaurant, and they refused to serve him because they thought he was homeless. He’s not homeless. That’s what I’m upset about. It’s gotten so out of hand that some restaurants are jumping to conclusions thinking because a person walks with a slow gate that they are homeless.” ■ “It is a question of sanitation. Not only do they urinate everywhere and throw their cigarette butts into the dead grass, but they also, after they have been fed, don’t want to walk to the garbage cans, which are close by. So they throw their paper plates and food they don’t want to eat into the bushes. And sometimes they even throw their shopping carts over the stone wall into the bushes. The park cleaners are not allowed to go over the stone wall to clean. They remain there for weeks.” ■ “If you feed them, they come. If you don’t, they won’t. Please don’t say it’s the climate that draws the homeless here. It’s the free handout atmosphere that does. Feeding them only enables them to remain homeless.” ■ “I’m a new homeowner in Santa Monica. I do agree that the city should do more to limit the public feedings. I have family in England and in the south, and when they come here to visit, I can’t even take them for a walk in Palisades Park. It’s actually quite embarrassing.” ■ “I think personally they should be drastically limited. It’s just adding to the disablement of Santa Monica, which is now getting a feeling of being Los Angeles City, not in Los Angeles County. As a long time resident, my husband and I feel it would be good if this was finally addressed properly. For a long time it’s been an acceptable part of this city, and I don’t think it should be. I’d like to have a bit more quality here in Santa Monica.” ■ “People wonder why there is such a problem with feedings attracting so many homeless? I can remember back not too long ago to the problem with wildlife. Remember, ‘Don’t feed the bears.’” ■ “Please do something. They are not all mentally retarded. Some of them are just lazy and enjoy their freedom from working for a living. I see them at Reed Park, and I tell you it’s a summer social. Santa Monica is like a marked city for hand-outs. Much more than our neighboring suburbs. This is not unlike the old hobos who marked the gator fence post for food. We are marked. I also really hate when they dump garbage bags out of the bins looking for whatever the heck they need.” ■ “I did an experiment the other day, and I made a nice sandwich--organic bread, whole wheat, organic ingredient-- and I tried to give it away to homeless people. Nobody wanted it. I came to the conclusion that they are very well fed in Santa Monica. They feel comfortable here. I think it is very good that these people are trying to feed the needy, but please do it in your own backyard. Let them come to you. Do not bring them to us.” ■ “I do agree that the city should limit the size of public feedings. I don’t think they help. I’m sure there are other ways the city can address these problems.” ■ “Unless Palisades Park is going to be renamed Skid Row Park, the public feedings there must stop. What should be a grassy paradise has become a seedy patchwork of sleeping bags, blankets, shopping carts, cigarette butts and spread out laundry. All a consequence of public feedings.” ■ “The private and non-profit outreach programs should bring the groups to their locations where the services can be provided and where the homeless can become familiar with the locations of these different 21 organizations. This way the homeless will get to the services and the services to the homeless.” ■ “On the issue of public feedings, it is my position that regulating them into nonexistence would only mask the problem by shifting it to another city. The best actual solution that I have been able to conjure is something as follows: “Most homeless people do not WANT to sleep in such high-profile areas as the Promenade, yet they must sleep SOME- WHERE. By designating a parking lot as a legal sleeping ground, you could both control where the homeless slept and do them the favor of legalizing a necessary function (it is currently illegal to sleep/camp anywhere in public in Santa Monica, and homeless people lack private property). Public feedings, held at these same sleeping lots, would serve the treble purposes of nourishing the homeless, giving them an incentive to stay in the designated areas and keeping them off the Promenade. If you are going to chase the homeless out, it would be kind of you to provide a place for them to go.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 26, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072602.pdf?ref=smdp.com)