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# Open letter to all Promenade merchants
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/open-letter-to-all-promenade-merchants-editor/
- Published: 2002-07-29T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:34:31.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*By Kenneth A. McCrae Santa Monica*

After reading several recent anti-homeless articles in the Santa Monica Daily Press (SMDP), I empathize with your problems concerning Santa Monica’s homeless citizens, who, for want of any other place to sleep, huddle in your doorways at night. I am a former business manager, so I understand.

I concur there has indeed been recent growth in the number of transients (as opposed to the truly homeless) in the city. Santa Monica IS the dumping ground for other communities’unwanted. (In certain cities, I’ve been told, the police will actually buy transients bus tickets to Santa Monica just to get them out of town!) Of course, the wonderful climate and beauty of Santa Monica draw many homeless here, just as they do tourists. Not much we can do about that.

If you want us off the Promenade, PLEASE HELP US FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO STAY! Right now, there is simply no alternative. On the same front page which castigated the homeless, the SMDP also ran a story stating that the average cost of homes in California has risen once again to around $230,000\. How can the homeless, with their monthly $221 General Relief payments, afford them? Answer: THEY CAN’T! There are only about 200 beds available on a nightly basis in Santa Monica, but well over 1,000 homeless on its streets each night. Waiting lists are long, the maze of bureaucracy and regimentation required to obtain a space is, at the least, both frustrating and demeaning. And most shelters are open only during limited nighttime hours. Where would you have us go during the day? PLEASE HELP US FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO STAY!

You and your parent organizations have contacts and resources we cannot access (tax write-offs, etc.). Please use them to help us find an unused building, warehouse or even a vacant lot where we can create a 7/24 ‘safe haven’ shelter as an alternative to the Promenade. We, the truly homeless, would be overjoyed to have a place away from the hustle and bustle of the Promenade, which offers us safe shelter at night, access to restrooms and showers around the clock and security for our possessions while we look for work the next day. Perhaps, once we relocate away from 3rd Street, you might even be able to help us out with leftovers from some Promenade restaurants so we don’t have to panhandle to eat, donate outdated or excess equipment such as phones, desks or tables, chairs, obsolete computers...I’m dreaming of course.

Do away with the food lines? Then the homeless who depend on them will be forced to find food in other ways: more aggressive panhandling, petty theft, dumpster-diving, trash can buffet, etc. But most will not consider leaving Santa Monica — their home. Why not, instead, help provide us a place where we can eat? The SMDP keeps harping on the fact that Santa Monica’s homeless citizens have access to 21 meals a week! (A little sarcasm next.) Why, that’s three meals a day! What a concept! I don’t know anyone who eats three meals a day, do you? (Sarcasm over.) But that’s only for those who can travel, dragging their belongings with them, to the many feeding locations, sometimes with conflicting schedules, and tolerate the often prerequisite religious brainwashing. (You should see what some of these meals consist of!) I AM NOT speaking for the punks and druggies who hang out and conduct their business along your streets, then go home to mommy and daddy and sleep in soft, warm beds every night. Sick the Santa Monica Police Department on them! An article in the SMDP, July 9, 2002, proves my point: the girl interviewed, “Brittany,” admits she commutes from downtown Los Angeles. She is not a Santa Monican. She just hangs here. Nor am I speaking for the professional panhandlers who show up here every day and deprive the truly homeless of money and the need for food. I personally find the pro’s attitude and aggressiveness repugnant, but it brings them more than enough money for food and booze and drugs daily. Sick the SMPD on them, too! Aggressive panhandling IS AGAINST THE LAW! (Note: I see in the SMDP, July 14, 2002, that the police have finally started after them! Hooray!!) I AM speaking about the 1,000-plus truly homeless Santa Monica citizens, any one of whom would gladly give his or her eyeteeth for a safe place to stay at night and a job. For example: “Linda,” one of Santa Monica’s homeless who upset you so much, is white-haired, in her nineties and can walk only with the aid of a crutch. When she needs to use the restroom in the middle of the night, she slowly hobbles to the nearest open facility. The soft clicking of her crutch as she passes sometimes awakens me.

“Dave,” in his late fifties, is a Ph.D. “down-sized” out of his job after years of loyal service. He’s been turned down for several jobs. Perhaps it’s his age, or the shabby, worn looked forced upon him by his homeless condition, or that he’s forced to carry everything he owns with him when he goes for an interview, or that some businesses will not even let him inside to obtain an application.

I could tell you about the other homeless who will sleep on the streets and in the alleys (and on the Promenade) of Santa Monica tonight, but I think (and pray) that you get my point. These homeless are people! They could be your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter or even, fate forbid someday, YOU!

Finally, before scapegoating the homeless for loss of business and every other sin of earth consider the wandering groups of drunks and illegal aliens passing through the Promenade at all hours of the night. They are far less concerned with the sanitary conditions of the Promenade than those who call it home. In fact, with your doorways emptied of their homeless watchmen, you’ll find many more becoming restrooms overnight.

Consider the vetoed Target store, which would have drawn large numbers of customers to the area as well as having offered many homeless an opportunity to obtain employment.

Consider the drop-off in business in reaction to the September 11, 2001, attack on our country. Consider the precarious state of our economy, with massive frauds, bankruptcies and crashing stocks.

Consider that we are not to blame for the fact that Santa Monica’s $30,000 per month beach-side condos are not renting like hot cakes this summer. (SMDP, July 22, 2002.) The homeless are as much the victims of events beyond control as you are! We are NOT the cause of all your woes!

P.S. I invite all interested parties from the Promenade to attend our next Side-By-Side meeting: Wednesday, July 31, 7 p.m. at the Ken Edwards Center on Fourth Street to discuss this matter. Side-By-Side is a coalition of homeless and housed which meets regularly to address the problems of homelessness.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 29, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072902.pdf?ref=smdp.com)