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# The party’s over
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/the-partys-over-editor/
- Published: 2002-10-31T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:50:11.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

*By Jan Tousignant Santa Monica*

Bob Wilson, a writer, once said, “You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within.”

Crisis and bad times befall most of us in the course of a lifetime. Sympathy, kind words and helping hands are, without a doubt, wonderful allies. However, both the benefits derived and the good will extended by others tend to fade, over time, when someone stays on that plateau of neediness too long. I think benefactors, who step in and provide only the bare necessities (like feedings), become civic minded enablers, filling a physical void but not adding to the motivational vacuum endemic to this population of people. And this minimal help, while enough to meet the subsistence requirements of the homeless, may become a detour of sorts from them “building a fire within,” in which to change their own lives for the better.

Creating a co-dependent environment, between the homeless and this city, is the kind of assistance subscribed to by advocates like Robert Myers. Although Mr. Myers may be a decent person, the lawsuit he intends to file (SMDP Oct. 24), aimed at quashing any council interventions muting the homeless presence here, is ruthless and insensitive to those residents seeking some kind of relief from this invasion of strangers. He is literally forcing his brand of compassion onto an exhausted Santa Monica public. We are tired of all the behavioral problems, financial obligations and lack of giving back that this population of rootless people places on this community, in greater quantities, every day.

When patience is spent, you simply don't refill it by penalizing those who have done more than their fair share to be open-armed to the homeless. But this is exactly what Bob Myers intends to do. He preaches to the choir about how they shouldn’t slack off being selfless to people who don’t “live” here. However, when this same fluid population is faced with helping someone else in need, they don’t answer the call.

Remember Leticia Vasquez? The young mother who was murdered outside Santa Monica City Hall by her estranged husband. The large numbers of homeless, waiting to be fed, provided a perfect camouflage preventing Leticia from seeing her ex-husband until it was too late. She was brutally stabbed to death in the midst of a crowd of spectators! Who, among the homeless, helped Ms. Vasquez? Not one. They were either too afraid, too detached, too involved in their own apathy to reach out to another who needed them... for a change. And these are the very people who are the subjects of Mr. Myers’ sermon, demanding that the City of Santa Monica accommodate their presence here, indefinitely, or else...

To the residents, who have lived in Santa Monica for the last two decades, Mr. Myers’ reputation as the legislative chemist of renters’ rights ideology is well documented. Santa Monicans have become lab rats, and the city itself is the medium for their long-term social experiment. Now Mr. Myers is extending his platform to include a one-sided homeless agenda — and we aren't on the right side. I feel it will only worsen if the renters rights slate is voted in, carte blanche, Nov. 5.

Somehow, the motto “Get a life!” seems appropriate for both Mr. Myers and the drifters he myopically claims are the victims of lagging compassion. These people, the homeless, need to see a way to accept aid and then use it to grow their way out of depending on others. Assistance, with sunset clauses, should be applauded instead of condemned. Attitudes, voicing “enough is enough,” should be met with “we understand” instead of “shame on you for not doing more.”

Santa Monica has been a gracious place, reconciling people who are economically diverse. It’s time, however, for those who come here, lounging in our parks, streets and Promenade, to own their own life, becoming self-sufficient or simply move on. Nothing lasts forever.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/103102.pdf?ref=smdp.com)