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# No place for mentally ill shelter
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/no-place-for-mentally-ill-shelter-editor/
- Published: 2006-09-12T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T21:23:55.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Ocean Park, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Jeff Bender Santa Monica*

Last Thursday, the Friends of Sunset Park held a community meeting concerning the new plans for yet another shelter for the mentally ill and homeless to be located in southern Santa Monica. While this meeting was supposed to honestly address the concerns of the neighbors living near 20th and Pearl Street, it was instead a dog and pony show of “feel good” success stories about how great this program is. Legitimate questions about safety and increased criminal activity were brushed off, and the people who oppose this facility’s location were unfairly labeled as “just ignorant to the effects of mental illness” and “fear mongers.”

The neighbors of this proposed location do sympathize with the plight of the people helped by Step Up On Second. However, we feel that this area is doing more than its fair share in regards to the number of these types of facilities located nearby. We already have the CLARE foundation on Pico Boulevard, Chrysalis on Lincoln Boulevard, the new $9 million OPCC center on Cloverfield Boulevard, and of course Step-Up’s Daniel’s Place on 27th Street and Ocean Park Boulevard. Why does southern Santa Monica constantly have to be the dumping ground for these types of programs?

This is a program that does not even primarily serve people from Santa Monica. By his own admission, Tod Lipka, Step-Up’s representative, told the group that only 35 percent of the people in his program come from the Westside.

The majority of the programs mentally ill participants come from anywhere but Santa Monica, yet we are asked to welcome and fund even more unstable people than we already have. If free room and board in a newly renovated, $1.5 million house in a nice beachside community isn’t a magnet for more homeless and mentally ill people to come here then I don’t know what is.

Lipka spoke of the program’s intensive screening of participants, but there were no guarantees that they would be screening out individuals with criminal records or individuals with past histories of violence or sexual predation. The “intensive” supervision for the eight mentally ill participants would consist of only one person. When asked who this supervisor might be, Mr. Lipka pointed to four people, one of whom looked to be a frail woman in her 80s.

The most disconcerting event of the evening was when Sunset Park’s own City Councilman Herb Katz stood up, not to represent the majority of homeowners and residents of this area who oppose this location, but to defend his pet nonprofit organization. Katz is a disgrace to his constituents, and he should resign from City Council based on the contempt he has shown toward the people he was elected to represent.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 12, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091206.pdf?ref=smdp.com)