New City Councilman pledges to work tirelessly on homelessness issue
(Editor’s note: This is the final article in a weekly series examining the priorities of four residents elected on Nov. 2 to serve on the Santa Monica City Council.)
By John Wood
Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL — Public drunks should be taken to an old jail in the basement of Santa Monica City Hall and new homeless shelters should be built in West Los Angeles, City Councilman-elect Bobby Shriver said Monday.
Shriver, who campaigned heavily on a platform of reducing homelessness, said he would make the hot-button regional issue his highest priority in office, adding he expected tangible results within one year.
“One of the things I really don’t want to do is lose my focus on this,” said Shriver, 50, a Kennedy family scion who on Nov. 2 was elected to one of four open council seats. “A lot of matters come up, and I don’t want to lose my focus. I’m going to work on one thing and I’m going to do my damnedest.”
“I’m going to work on one thing and I’m going to do my damnedest.” — BOBBY SHRIVER City Councilman-elect
Shriver is one of four Santa Monicans who tonight will begin four-year council terms. Also elected Nov. 2 were incumbents Richard Bloom, Ken Genser and Herb Katz. Those four join City Councilmen Bob Holbrook and Kevin McKeown, and City Councilman Pam O’Connor, whose terms expire in 2006.
The first step in tackling homelessness is to set up a sobering center run by social service professionals where police can take public drunks, said Shriver, who suggested the old jail in City Hall’s basement be used.
“That center would be operated not by the police but by someone that has experience dealing with alcohol and addiction,” he said. “It might give these people access to treatment... For residents, it gives the police a place to take these folks instead of just leaving them in the street, which is the current system.”
Shriver said his goal was to have the facility open within a year. In the meantime, he said he aims to push forward with plans to turn vacant buildings on the Veterans Administration land in West LA into shelters.
To make those plans reality, Shriver said he would immediately put an item on the City Council agenda asking that a task force or study group be formed to explore the shelter proposal. Three vacant buildings at the site could be used, said Shriver, who added a social service provider still needs to be chosen and funding needs to be secured.
“I don’t want to have long study groups about it — I want action taken,” he added. “I think that’s why people voted for me and I’m going to make sure I do whatever I can to make sure council takes those steps in the short term... I want to act. I think people want specific action and a year from now we have to be able to look back and say, ‘We did this specific thing. We built the sobering center.’”
Though tackling homelessness will consume much of his next term, Shriver said he also looked forward to overseeing an update to City Hall’s development standards, a process currently underway that will take several years. Public input will be key, as will promoting open space and parks, Shriver added.
“It’s a time to be very, very careful,” Shriver said. “It’s going to influence this town for a long time to come.”
Another priority for Shriver, he said, will be shortening council meetings, which often run past midnight. Shriver said some of his suggestions for shortening meetings have been unpopular with council incumbents.
“I want to put a buzzer on the council,” he said. “I think meetings should end at 11 p.m.”
Nephew to John F. Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, and brother-in-law to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shriver has a political pedigree that attracted substantial interest from the national media. Still, Shriver maintained he had no aspirations for higher office.
“I spent my life trying to live in Santa Monica, why would I leave and move to Sacramento?” he said.
A 17-year resident of Santa Monica with a background in law and journalism, Shriver also has raised millions of dollars for AIDS victims in Africa and for the Special Olympics, an organization founded by his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. He said that work has given him the skills needed to affect change.
“It’s really, in a funny way, it’s the same kind of work I have been doing, except my client, so to speak, is much closer to me now than the Africans or the Special Olympians were,” Shriver said. “My clients I see in the coffee shop every morning, and I’m very conscious of that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 7, 2004. Read the original PDF.