By John Hernlund Santa Monica
Regarding your article: “City’s drunks may soon have new destination” (SMDP, July 7).
Not that I want to be a NIMBYist, but it seems our neighborhood (Pico and Lincoln) currently suffers from a sort of “AIMBY” (where A=Already). You can’t be NIMBY if it’s AIMBY. Now I have some hint, or clue, as to why all the drunks are hanging out in my neighborhood.
There are a substantial fraction more here than in most other residential parts of our city. Why? I could never figure it out. That never made any sense to me. Panhandling is no good here, as the residents are asked for spare change a dozen times per day. There are no good places to sleep, ever since the CHP cleared out I-10. So how do they come by this neighborhood daily?
According to your article, LAPD and Culver City police ship them over here every day. That’s awfully neighborly of them. And now the city of Santa Monica wants to add more to the mix. Twenty-five percent return for treatment and the other 75 percent end up back on our corners over and over again after avoiding jail by a brief stay at a “sobering up” facility. That is supposed to make us more comfortable with the notion?
Sure this project will save money and that’s a good thing for the city. I am all for this project, in concept at least. We need all the savings we can muster. However, in paying our dues to society, the burden ought to be distributed evenly around among the citizens. Is this not, at the very least, the most fair option?
To offset this inequity, I have an alternate proposition. Why not put this center in northern Santa Monica? This is a much better option for many reasons. 1) There are no public services facilities in northern Santa Monica and people have a need for these services in this city. It is a travesty for drunks or other transients not to have access to public services in every neighborhood. 2) The views that the drunks may obtain, for example of Santa Monica Canyon, may help aid in their recovery from their addiction or other affliction and perhaps increase their return rates to the facility to 50 percent or higher. 3) One can easily find a place to park such a facility in northern Santa Monica that is not adjacent to several liquor stores. Surely it is cruel to land a fellow with drunk tank across the street from a very well-stocked liquor store. 4) Having drunks routinely defecate in their cars or other private spaces will raise the local residents’ public conscience about this problem the city faces. Perhaps we can test the idea of putting a port-a-john on every street corner, since in northern Santa Monica such devices are less likely to get in the way of the hustle and bustle, except for the occasional hot pants jogger with a dog on a leash. 5) LA and Culver City (according to the article) already dump drunks into the Pico and Lincoln area, so we need to spread it out around the city. Our neighborhood will take every other city’s drunks (as is the current practice), while northern Santa Monica can take our own city’s drunks. Sounds more than fair to me.
Will the city accept this proposition, or will the city continue to crap in the same location over and over again? We vote too. Or does money buy more than a vote in Santa Monica?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 11, 2003. Read the original PDF.