Fewer people placed into permanent housing last year under City Hall’s ‘continuum of care’
(Editor’s note: This is the second article in a three-part series on homelessness in Santa Monica. An article in the Jan. 15 edition looked at new strategies for reducing homelessness. The third article will examine the impacts of homelessness in Santa Monica.) CITY HALL — Nearly 2,200 homeless people received some form of aid in Santa Monica last year, with several hundred moving into permanent housing and taking permanent jobs. Still, the community remains divided over how best to deal with vagrancy.
While social service providers and many city officials maintain homeless programs are making significant strides in the face of economic obstacles, critics maintain the generous programs continue to inflate the local transient population.
Meanwhile, residents and merchants are left to confront the realities of homelessness on a daily basis.
Officials next week are expected to adopt an “action plan” for dealing with homelessness in the coming year. Among the suggestions raised at a Jan. 11 public meeting were the creation of a special courtroom for homeless offenders, allowing transients to choose to get help rather than serve time in jail and instituting a special program to assist the most entrenched homeless residents of Santa Monica.
Those suggestions aside, City Hall is expected to continue giving nearly $2 million annually to nonprofit groups that serve the homeless. Last year, City Hall handed out a collective $1,823,391 to nine Santa Monica social service providers. The nine providers then raised an additional $5 million from outside sources, according to an annual report on homelessness prepared by City Hall.
In order to receive city money, each of the groups must plug in to a network for what City Hall calls its “continuum of care.” By tracking each person’s use of services in a computer database, city officials hope to transition people from the streets into jobs and homes.
A total of 2,188 people logged into the continuum of care from July 2003 to July 2004, according to the report. Of those, 339 eventually landed in permanent housing, 405 were placed in transitional housing and 626 received emergency shelter. Additionally, the programs helped 397 people land permanent jobs and 210 temporary employment, according to the homelessness report.
Those numbers are down overall from the previous year. In 2002-03, the continuum of care helped 500 more people than in 2003-04, placing nearly 100 more people in permanent housing. City staffers blamed the drops on federal funding cuts.
The only statistic to buck that trend was the number of people placed in emergency shelters. In 2002-03, just 474 transients were cared for in emergency shelters, according to the report, while in 2003-04, that number rose to 626. Officials said that rise correlates with the dire need for more beds locally and across the country.
According to the report on homelessness: “In December 2004, the United States Conference of Mayors released its annual ‘Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities.’ This 27-city survey reported that in 2004, 70 percent of the cities registered an increase in requests for emergency shelter... Further, 88 percent of the responding cities expect requests for emergency food and shelter assistance to increase in 2005.”
While local nonprofit groups work to open a new 55-bed shelter at Michigan Avenue and Cloverfield Boulevard, and push ahead plans for a 46-unit permanent housing facility on Fifth Street, officials are once again talking about outdoor homeless food lines throughout Santa Monica.
Many religious and other groups that sponsor the food lines are from out of town and not plugged into the continuum of care. Since first forming a homeless task force in 1991, City Hall has sought to link the feeding groups with local social service providers and hold the feedings indoors. Seeing little success more than a decade later, officials in 2002 passed an ordinance that requires the groups to obtain permits from the city and county. The idea was that many of the groups would be deterred from hosting the food lines, which many feel only attract more vagrants to Santa Monica.
Since then, one of the feeding programs has agreed to move indoors and many of the others apparently have decided to take their food lines elsewhere. Some 26 groups held regular food lines in the park in 2002, according to the report, which said only four groups do so today.
Those groups still attract large crowds, however, and City Hall is embroiled in a Nine social service agencies in Santa Monica collectively received more than $1.8 million in funding from City Hall last year. They were: Chrysalis New Directions Ocean Park Community Center St. Joseph Center Step Up on Second The CLARE Foundation The Salvation Army The Westside Food Bank Upward Bound House legal battle over how to enforce its 2002 law. City Hall was sued shortly after initiating the ordinance by First Amendment activist group Food Not Bombs, which claimed the ordinance violates constitutional rights that allows all individuals to congregate in parks and elsewhere. Council members discussed the lawsuit behind closed doors last week, but declined to comment on the pending matter.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 19, 2005. Read the original PDF.