By Rick Parkinson
On page 1 of the July 7 edition, there was a story that “The city’s drunks may soon have a new destination.” A ‘sobering house’ at Ninth and Pico in place of the city jail to save money. Here they will stay until sober, and then be released to the Pico neighborhood.
What a great idea! Concentrate all the drunks in the city into the worst crime and drug infested section in the city. These won’t even be your average SM asleep-in-the-alley drunks, these will be the “4.5” drunks per day that are so belligerent that people have had to call the police to have then forcibly removed.
These hard-core drunks will be right at home at Ninth and Pico. Within three blocks there are four liquor stores and a bar. (Along Pico alone within 17 blocks there are seven liquor stores and two more bars.) Two other liquor stores have gone out of business recently as the profit margin on quart-sized malt liquor must be too low with all the competition. The city wonders why they can’t get businesses to move into the Pico neighborhood.
I, however, don’t live in the Pico neighborhood, because like all the City Council members, all the policemen and all the firemen in the city, I don’t want to raise children in this crime and drunk infested area. Not to mention essentially all the section eight housing, drug and mental “rehabilitation centers” in the city.
Let’s build a nice place to sober up and rehabilitate all the worst homeless drunks in the city on Montana Avenue. See how they like it!
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 14, 2003. Read the original PDF.