By Charles Springer
In his column last week, Santa Monica Daily Press columnist Ed Silverstein gave a really bad view of the whole homeless population of this city in order to make a case to “reduce the homeless population by two thirds,” to “free up police and ensure our safety,” “reduce the demands on our EMS units” and “reduce or eliminate the budget deficit and free up more money for schools.”
I honestly find this kind of funny. The reason being is the fact that the influx of homeless in this city is caused by this same attitude towards homelessness throughout the county. The population has increased because the “homeless shuffle” had begun long ago by the redevelopment of Hollywood, downtown LA and Venice Beach, to mention a few of the areas where developers are building more unaffordable housing and not hiring any of the homeless population who would work in lieu of hiring illegal immigrants. These American citizens are being shuffled around the county area and come to Santa Monica because this city has a reputation for being compassionate to the homeless.
Now while I do not disagree with Mr. Silverstein about the types of people he has encountered, they are not the only type of homeless people who live in Santa Monica. There are many of us who you would not even think are homeless. This is because we carry ourselves differently than those he chose to profile in his column.
There are those of us who do not live the stereotypical homeless lifestyle — we either work or want to work. As a matter of fact, there are more than a few of us who want to work and would gladly work if the job market was not in so much of a huge recovery. Sitting in Starbucks right now as I write this column, there are three to six people who want to work and help out with the moving of the vending carts when we need them to.
There also is the point he tries to make about most of us being criminals who shoplift, mug or burglarize your home, or molest your children and are capable of murder and rape. I wonder where he comes up with all these supposed numbers.
When I wrote about the influx of hard-core drugs on the street last week, I obtusely mentioned the fact that the ones who deal come to the streets to find people to work for them. Yes, the drugs come from your own neighborhoods to the streets, as was the topic of an article in last week about a $5 million cocaine bust on 18th Street. And as far as people mugging you or molesting your children, you might want to look in your neighborhoods for people of the same ilk who might live right next door — especially the child molesters and sexual predators who reside here in your own neighborhoods. The shoplifting would be mostly for food because the City Council was pushed to rid the city of feeding programs, which has not worked to rid this city of homeless, but created an environment where a hungry person would shoplift to feed themselves. What would you do if you were starving?
Now to the mentally ill. They are a product of the Reagan era, when state funding was cut and replaced with outpatient care. As you can see by the amount of mentally ill on the streets today, it was a huge error in judgment. The fact that they are still on the streets is a testament to the fine workings of our elected leaders to take care of their citizens, especially the ones who cannot care for themselves. And to be honest with you, most of the mentally ill here in Santa Monica are veterans, which is a testament to the way the governing body of this great nation treats its war vets.
I hope Mr. Silverstein will consider next time what I have pointed out and ask someone who is knowledgeable about the homeless before he tries to “profile” all of us like he did last week. (Charles Springer is a homeless resident of Santa Monica and a freelance writer and artist who is looking for any type of artistic job in the field of animation.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 13, 2003. Read the original PDF.