“Is Cloverfield Boulevard and Michigan Avenue an appropriate location for the city’s largest homeless services provider? Why or why not? If not, where else should it go?”
Here are your responses: ■ “I think it meets the needs of both the residents and the needs of the homeless in the city, of which there are quite a few. It’s an industrial area, so it’s not near any homes or anything. I think this will be very good for the city, the homeless and the residents.” ■ “Yes, Cloverfield and Michigan is a very appropriate place for OPCC’s access center and daybreak shelter. OPCC is a major social service provider in Santa Monica. The access center and daybreak shelter have to move. In this dense, urban environment they have found a place that is appropriately zoned and not in the center of residential housing. This site will accommodate these programs and have minimal impact on the surrounding area. OPCC provides a tremendous service for Santa Monica. They help people recover their lives and move off the street. They need a place just like this.” ■ “No. Service locations for the homeless should be dispersed throughout the city and kept at a more manageable level. For example, no more than 15 at each location.” ■ “I think that it’s not going to bother people and it would be better to have it at the old location but apparently the bus service doesn’t want it there anymore. There are very few other places where this type of service would be acceptable. So, we need to just deal with the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) folks and keep this center in an area where there are the fewest objections.” ■ “I think the Ocean Park Community Center is a joke. Instead of wasting taxpayer money giving it to this you should give it to two wonderful organizations that really do some good: the Salvation Army and the Union Rescue Mission. That way, you can help all the homeless in downtown LA and not just here in Santa Monica.” ■ “Wasn’t there any room in the Pico neighborhood?” ■“I think all the homeless service providers should be in the big hotels by the beach because everyone knows how much tourists love the homeless.” ■ “No, Cloverfield and Michigan is not the appropriate location for the city’s largest homeless or vagrant facility. Other places it could go are Robin’s Auto Top, which is currently vacant. That $7 million could buy that property. It could go into the RAND building that is going to be vacated when RAND moves, or it could go behind City Hall when the police move in to all of those vacated offices. The Pico neighborhood is already home to the social services and numerous low income projects. So, it’s not a matter of NIMBY, it’s a matter of AIMBY, Already In My Back Yard.” ■ “Cloverfield is not an appropriate location for a homeless shelter. The Pico neighborhood has too many homeless service agencies as it is. Preferably, Beverly Hills or Culver City for OPCC. Or, Santa Monica Airport if it must be in Santa Monica. Move to Skid Row.” ■ “We should first dispense with the term homeless and make the distinction between the truly mentally ill who deserve ongoing help and shelter, drug addicts and alcoholics who, through aggressive treatment and shelter, hopefully can regain productive roles in society, and, thirdly, the large number of derelicts who simply don’t care about anything and are happy to sleep outdoors in our moderate climate, get free meals each day, and use whatever money they can get through government welfare and panhandling to party with. No one wants 355 homeless people each day in their neighborhood. Do people have the right to live on the streets? No, they don’t. And this third group, derelicts, need to be told to clean up their lives or they will be warehoused. And all of this must be done on the federal level of government. The citizens of Santa Monica are sick of our City Council using this so-called homeless population as props to point out what they feel is the heartlessness of a capitalistic system. Rather than wasting time on such comparatively minor issues such as ATM fees, these lefties could do something really useful and organize people nationwide to demand that the federal government take aggressive action on what is a national disgrace. And if you think we have a problem now, just wait until the ongoing gentrifica-tion in downtown LA pushes even more people into Santa Monica. It’s going to be a real problem.” ■ “Yes, I think it’s a good location for now because it’s right next to the place where all the artists are and a lot of the people there are big supporters of the homeless so I think that it’s appropriate that it be right down the street from them. The other thing is that after we move it from there, we should move it to Palmdale and we should pay Palmdale $2 million a year, like we pay $2 million a year anyway and have people in Palmdale take care of it. That way, we can take the homeless and drive them up to the facility in Palmdale and rehabilitate them there.” ■ “Putting a new homeless shelter at Michigan and Cloverfield would not be in the best interests of the Pico neighborhood community. It’s a community that has children and families. It’s a community that is striving to work out a lot of problems. It’s a community that is moving ahead. I think putting the homeless shelter there would provide one more roadblock for the community. The community has gone through enough lately, with a rash of shootings. We’re working really hard to improve the community and I think it’s in the city’s best interests to help the community in this effort and not put the homeless shelter in that particular location.” ■ “I live on Cloverfield between Pico and Michigan. Let me tell you, your idea of putting a homeless shelter there is very, very bad. Right now, we have a problem of drunks and addicts. They drink, they throw and break their bottles on Cloverfield. It makes it dangerous for all of us. We’re elderly people that live here! And there’s no way for us to tolerate all the garbage! Plus, these people, they’re really not homeless. All their problems, the ones that they’re talking about, I know where that’s at. And I know who they are and they’re mentally ill. So, you want to throw all these mentally ill people on all of us? No. That’s wrong! I say no to this question, no to your suggestion, no to Cloverfield between Pico and Michigan. We have enough homeless people, drunks and addicts already that are giving us problems and its hard to put a stop to it right now. And you want to put a homeless service provider? They’re mentally ill people. Please do not put this facility over here. We have enough problems.” ■ “They should move it there but they have to have very good building security. They have to make sure that the homeless don’t go causing problems. They should really monitor the outlets. But that’s a good place to put it.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.