Santa Monica Homeless

Update –  June 11, 2019. I wrote this post in 2008 and last summer, when I was in California, I asked some Santa Monica residents about the homeless situation. Apparently, it is no better today than it was 10 years ago. Is this true? Are there still 2,000 homeless people in Santa Monica? Or more? Or less?

Those of you who were following my recent Route 66 Trip Log saw the pictures I posted of the many homeless people I saw on the morning of Sunday, September 21, 2008. When I returned home I wrote a letter of concern to the Santa Monica City Council members. Only one member replied and while Kevin McKeown explained why there’s such a problem in Santa Monica, it didn’t satisfy me. He didn’t address the question of why there isn’t aid coming from the residents of Santa Monica, who include many highly paid members of the entertainment industry. I pasted the e-mail exchange below.

Dear Santa Monica City Council members,

On Saturday, September 20, 2008, having completed a Route 66 adventure, I checked into the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. On Sunday morning, I strolled down to the Pier. Along the way, the number of homeless people was shocking. It was such a contrast to the opulent runners, who seemed to be unaware of the unfortunate individuals.

I took pictures of these unfortunates and posted them on my Web site. When I took the pictures, I pretended I was taking a picture of something else, but kept them in the frame. There were plenty of the homeless even past the 3rd Street Promenade. At no time did I feel threatened and was never approached for a handout.

Council members, why is homelessness so rampant in Santa Monica? I have traveled a lot domestically and abroad and I’ve seen the homeless in many cities, but never to this degree. I recently stayed at the Hyatt in Huntington Beach, and I didn’t see any homeless there.

I can see from my Internet searches that there have been many programs to help the homeless in your area. As well-meaning as the administrators might be, those programs don’t seem to be solving the problem.

I’ve pasted one of the pictures below and the rest can be viewed on my website under Route 66 Pictures. I’m also going to share the contents of this email on my blog because a lot of my readers were very touched by the situation of the homeless in Santa Monica.

Please share my e-mail with as many officials as possible in Santa Monica.  Thank you for your time,

Sincerely,

Ann Silverthorn

Here is Kevin’s reply:

From: Kevin McKeown
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2008 1:51 AM
To: Ann Silverthorn
Subject: Re: Concern about homeless in Santa Monica

On 10/18/08 4:48 PM, ‘Ann Silverthorn’wrote:

> Council members, why is homelessness so rampant in Santa Monica?
Ann, first, thanks for your compassion and for writing.

Santa Monica has a homeless population that has traveled to come her just as you did, and for many of the same reasons. We are the historic end of the road West, and certainly a more comfortable place to be homeless than a colder climate. What’s more, our relative affluence and our tourism trade make this a fairly easy place to find handouts or to panhandle.

> I can see from my Internet searches that there have been many programs
> to help the homeless in your area. As well-meaning as the
> administrators might be, those programs don’t seem to be solving the problem.

A couple of years ago we began a major shift in our helping strategy, and we are beginning to see real results. Probably the best way to explain what we’re now doing is to share a piece I wrote for our local paper at the time we began the shift:

END THE NATIONAL DISGRACE OF HOMELESSNESS
Santa Monica Mirror, May 25, 2006
by Councilmember Kevin McKeown

Stop trying to manage the local crisis. Instead, commit to ending the national disgrace. That was a key message at the May 11 national summit on homelessness in Denver. There to represent you, I was listening hard for how we in Santa Monica can find relief from the burden of homelessness.

We should be proud of Santa Monica’s history of compassionate willingness.

We’ve addressed as best we could a problem not of our own making, even when that problem literally ended up on our doorsteps. Much of what we have done has been effective in helping those ready to get off the streets, but our efforts have been overwhelmed by sheer numbers. While reaching out to the willing, until recently we didn’t often connect well with the neediest, as well as the most visible and vexing, street people. The ‘chronic homeless’ are those who’ve been without housing for a number of years.

Untreated mental illness, drug abuse and alcoholism among the chronic homeless are serious public health issues, but almost impossible to treat on the street. They create unending police and medical calls, costing us precious resources better put to other use. With recent grants, Santa Monica has begun helping the chronic homeless by first and foremost getting such people housed, a strategy called ‘housing first.’

Newly compiled information indicates focusing on housing, not just services, can yield significant results. Our summit host city Denver’s homeless count is down 11 percent in the past year, thanks to 400 new units of housing and a significant jobs initiative from Denver’s hospitality industry.

Results are trickling in from other areas that have tried the ‘housing first’ approach, and Santa Monica’s new thinking is right: it actually costs a community less to house the homeless than to endlessly dispatch police and medical personnel. Those expensive and disruptive services are not needed, or needed far less, when a person is simply housed.

Along with former Mayor Richard Bloom, Santa Monica ‘Homelessness Czar’ (and former County Supervisor) Ed Edelman and Assistant to the City Manager for Government Relations, Kate Vernez, I attended a series of presentations and workshops in Denver organized by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the federal agency coordinating state and regional efforts.

Reprising my role with our own local Westside Cities Council of Governments, where years ago I raised the issue of shared social services, I asked one Denver workshop about cooperative regionalism. Our efforts here to involve all of Los Angeles County in addressing homelessness together are paralleled throughout California, from San Diego to San Jose, and across the nation in communities as distant and varied as Hartford, Las Vegas, Miami and Anchorage.

Los Angeles County’s recent commitment of $100 million in one-time money and almost $20 million in ongoing funding holds real promise for Santa Monica.

When regions work cooperatively, particularly where they provide real housing opportunities besides just services, the results are striking. A survey in New York City last month showed a 13 percent drop in people on the streets over the past year. Chronic homelessness is down 26 percent in Dallas during the same time.

In Santa Monica, of course, housing is particularly expensive. How can we possibly afford to provide housing to the chronically homeless? Perhaps the question should be, how can we afford not to? Community after community has seen the hidden costs of homelessness, including those to hospitals and local businesses, cut dramatically in amounts that strongly suggest a ‘housing first’ policy may simply be sensible economics.

Our Denver keynote speaker Jim Collins, author of bedrock business bibles like Built to Last and Good to Great, urged cities to base homelessness policy on verified data, and to stick with proven strategies. Santa Monica’s choice of the Urban Institute to rigorously evaluate our programs will help move our homelessness efforts from ‘good to great.’

Council colleague Bobby Shriver has helped infuse new energy, and Santa Monica, thanks to aggressive grant-seeking by City staff, has been able to use federal money for the first phase of our concentration on housing the chronic homeless. That money won’t last, though, and other cities don’t have even that. U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano was everywhere during the summit, sharing his enthusiasm. In Mangano, the Bush Administration has provided a great quarterback — unfortunately, without also funding a team.

‘Housing first’ isn’t the whole answer to the national disgrace of homelessness, but it’s a new and effective component. We still must provide our existing ‘continuum of care’ services for those ready to help themselves. At the same time, we can’t countenance the anti-social behaviors by which a few among the homeless make life more difficult for all the rest of us. Let’s get those predators and lawbreakers off the streets, then work together to help homeless people who want and deserve our compassion and real assistance.

We came back from Denver knowing Santa Monica has done well in our decades of struggle to balance compassion for the poor with the impact homelessness has on our small town, but we need no longer be alone. With new cooperation, a focus on the chronic homeless and a commitment to ‘housing first,’ perhaps we can surrender the impossible task of trying to manage the local crisis. A society that has allowed its social safety net to fray and fail should not be surprised when as a result more people hit bottom. Let’s end this national disgrace.

Ann, just last week we got an update on how our new programs are working.

The report was given live at a City Council meeting, so I don’t have it in writing, but you can watch it for yourself online at http://santamonica.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2. Click on ‘Streaming Video’ for October 14, 2008, and then select agenda item 3-A.

Hope this helps you understand our efforts here, and, again, thank you for writing.

Kevin McKeown
City Councilmember

___________________________________________________
Kevin McKeown | Santa Monica, CA (USA)
‘Choose to be conscious’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And I replied:

From: Ann Silverthorn
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 5:24 PM
To: ‘Kevin McKeown’
Subject: RE: Concern about homeless in Santa Monica

Dear Kevin,

Thank you very much for your rapid response to my inquiry regarding the Santa Monica homeless. I read your article with great interest and watched the housing portion of City Council’s Oct. 14, 2008 meeting. I learned about the complexity of the homeless situation from those two sources.

Respectfully, however, neither the article nor the meeting video adequately addresses my concerns. Please let me respond and ask few more questions. You and the other council members have much more knowledge about your homeless than I do, but I can share what a lay(wo)man like me thinks about Santa Monica’s homeless situation.

You’re probably thinking, “Lady, MYOB, will you?”

Sorry–can’t do it. I witnessed first-hand the homeless in your city. I looked into their eyes, and I didn’t come home to forget about them and sink back into my comfortable cocoon.

In your e-mail, you shared, “Santa Monica has a homeless population that has traveled to come here just as you did, and for many of the same reasons.”

That makes a lot of sense and now I realize the problem you have. I understand that Santa Monica receives a large amount of homeless people because the city is the end of the road west. However, Santa Monica also benefits from this distinction. There are a lot more people pouring money into Santa Monica than the 200 or so homeless individuals are draining.

For example, I was in your city fewer than 24 hours and spent $600 on hotel, dining, and shopping. If I had had more time, I would have stayed longer and poured more money into your economy. And there are many tourists who are more affluent than me, so revenue from tourism must be very healthy.

I do not know if your city has a tourism tax, but if they don’t, they should. Also, how are the wealthy of Santa Monica contributing to helping their neighbors, the homeless, with whom they share the city?

From my observation of the City Council meeting, it appears as though there is a great deal of reliance on state and Federal funding. Concurrently, there’s seems to be a lot of concern about the complexity of dealing with all of the relative government sources.

Here’s an idea about how to deal with the homeless without immediate dependency on state or Federal funding. Use more Santa Monica dollars to provide critical food and shelter. Then let the veterans, mentally ill, and physically ill triage off into service areas (from state, Federal, or grant-related funding) that can assist the clients in a less-urgent manner.

Rhetorically, I ask: How many dollars of Santa Monica money are being used to help the homeless that sleep alongside the residents and tourists strolling past them?

On the video, one of the council members spoke about how the homeless often refuse assistance. I’m not surprised that they refuse. But with so many of these people vulnerable and likely to die on the streets, they shouldn’t be permitted to opt out.

For example, if a kid were walking into traffic, you wouldn’t say, “Oh Junior, won’t you please come back to the curb?” No, like me, I think you’d yank the little rascal off the street and THEN figure out where his irresponsible mother is hiding.

Why not issue a no-loitering ordinance to pluck the homeless up off the street and put them in a shelter. Once you get them into a shelter, they could be sent back to their home of origin, or be given other appropriate services to get them on their way. If you’re thinking that the police department doesn’t have enough time to handle this new concept, remember that they’ll have next-to-no vulnerable homeless left on the street and will handle fewer calls responding to violent crime.

So, use more Santa Monica and California dollars and fewer Federal dollars. (Save the Federal dollars for cities in the rust belt that have a homeless issue, but also have far-lower property values and family incomes than are found in your beautiful town.)

Or, light a fire under your grant writer. There are many facets of your homeless problem that relative corporations and foundations would be interested in funding.

Or, how about a nice annual fund for the homeless? I’m not trying to be flippant. Get celebrities out of their castles and stage fundraisers so they can help the homeless instead of ignoring them. If that sounds silly, think of the benefits those same folks already host. . . .

Finally, I’m wondering what Santa Monica did with the Okies during the Great Depression? With the American economy spiraling ever-downward, you’ll likely be seeing a river of “Okies” who’ll form a people-delta at your doorstep. Then, you won’t be able to wait for money from cash-strapped state and Federal agencies.

Again, thank you for responding to my concerns. I certainly appreciate your time and hope that Santa Monica can find a way to help the homeless rather than murmur about why the vouchers for the veterans aren’t being used.

Ann Silverthorn

And Kevin replied:

From: Kevin McKeown
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 4:11 AM
To: Ann Silverthorn
Subject: What we can and cannot do

Ann, if only we had just 200 homeless to house! Our survey of those most at risk, people on the street for many years and now suffering health debilitation that could be life-threatening, identified 100 people whom we’ve now targeted for our ‘housing first’ model. Housing is scarce and expensive in Santa Monica, but we’re making progress.

The last time the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority did a full survey in Santa Monica, they estimated ALMOST TWO THOUSAND homeless within the city. That’s why our resources are overwhelmed.

We spend several million directly on homeless services, and ten or twenty million more on indirect services like paramedic calls and emergency room visits that must be absorbed because the patients are indigent.

This expense comes out of our general fund, which IS fed in part by our “bed tax” on hotel rooms. Where we need state and federal help is with specialized services, such as those for vets, and with housing costs to get homeless people into safe, supportive environments.

Four walls and a roof often aren’t enough. After someone has been on the streets for a time, adjustment to housed life can be extremely challenging.

Without support, physical, mental, and social, many end up out on the streets again.

Your example of how we’d handle a kid in traffic makes sense, except we aren’t ALLOWED in California to intervene like that. All loitering laws in California were declared unconstitutional about 25 years ago. Further, no one can be forced to leave public space, even for a shelter, and no matter how dire the mental or medical condition of an individual may appear, we cannot force someone to take medication. A person can be taken into protective custody only at the point where they pose an immediate threat to themselves or others — so yes, a person walking in the middle of rush hour traffic can be taken off the street. Overnight. They they’re back out there.

If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am. You unwittingly have entered correspondence with a Councilmember who was on this city’s Task Force on Homelessness almost 20 years ago and has been an activist on the issue ever since.

There are those in Santa Monica, particularly in the business community, who HATE my efforts to help the homeless. They want us to just toss unhoused people aside, get them out of town, make Santa Monica safe for profit-making businesses like them. Two years ago when I ran for re-election, this came to a head with a vicious TV attack campaign against me, scapegoating the homeless, claiming it was my fault the homeless are here because I’m ‘soft’ on them.

An example: when homeless encampments on a parkland cliff became a problem, I argued that we work with the campers, who had no where else to go, helping them into shelters so they didn’t end up in some resident’s carport. The majority of the Council caved to pressure and ordered an immediate roust of the encampments, without time to do any housing placement. At election time, this was used to ‘show’ that I ‘encouraged camping in our parks.’

In a very difficult legal and political framework, I think we’re doing better at developing sane and humane homelessness policies than most communities. It just doesn’t look that way because of the sheer scale of the tragedy.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin sent this message two days later:

—–Original Message—–
From: Kevin McKeown
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 4:49 AM
To: Ann Silverthorn
Subject: A price for compassion

There was one last element in Santa Monica homelessness dynamics I wanted to share, but it took me a while to find.

Attached is an attack TV ad that was funded by beachfront hotels when I ran for reelection in 2006. My efforts to help the homeless here have not gone unrecognized <grin>.

The Edward Thomas Management Company spent about $800,000 trying to defeat me. I hope when you were here you stayed at someone else’s hotels, or part of your room rate was them recouping their loss. I came in first out of ten candidates for three seats.

Thanks,
Kevin

I still had concerns, so I replied:

From: Ann Silverthorn
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 4:08 PM
To: ‘Kevin McKeown’
Subject: RE: A price for compassion

Dear Kevin,

It’s amazing to think that there are 2,000 homeless people residing in Santa Monica. The ones we see in the park and on the pier represent only the top of the iceberg. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience about the homeless with me.

I can imagine how you felt having a person say on TV that Santa Monica needed to be protected from you. I was glad to find on a Google search that some residents protested against Edward Thomas Management’s negative campaign against you.

Thoreau said, “He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.”

Haven’t you known people who receive awards for doing nothing? I have. The people who give themselves entirely are often not recognized. This is probably because they are working so hard they have neither the time nor motivation to toot their own horns.

The Edward Thomas campaign money could certainly have been given to the homeless instead of throwing it away, which is what they did. It’s like the new Mac TV ad. The PC guy sits at a desk with piles of money. There’s a tiny pile geared toward fixing Vista and another, much bigger pile, for advertising. When the Mac guy comments on how little money is being used to solve the Vista problem, the PC guy gives up and puts all of the money into the advertising pile.

I hope you don’t mind, but I brainstormed some strategies that you may or may not have thought of. They may, or may not, be helpful. I used to be the grant writer for Gannon University, my alma mater, winning the university a $1,825 million Title III grant from the U.S. Department of Education for low-income students and also for technology. I taught grant writing at the graduate level, and I’ve been involved with philanthropic concerns for quite some time. So I know a bit about what I speak.

If businesses that have a presence in Santa Monica started a collective foundation for the homeless, their efforts could reduce the number of homeless people on the street. The businesses could write off their contributions, too. And they would receive good press and they would be a model for other cities with a homeless problem.

A separate, non-profit could be founded for the homeless, dedicated to helping fund services, according to its mission statement. They would then be eligible to write grant proposals to corporations and foundations. I recently read that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was getting involved with homelessness issues. They used to be focused on AIDS and third-world countries. There are many needs in your community that could be identified as projects and very likely to pull in revenue. There should also be a committee made up of people who have been mainstreamed and also, if possible, some currently on the street.

It would be ideal if word got around that Santa Monica helps the homeless–but with tough love. Your strategy could be modeled by other cities that have a significant homeless condition. Santa Monica has the highest influx of the homeless and therefore, the opportunity to develop a highly credible, effective strategy.

Homeless individuals who were thinking about moving to Santa Monica, the Mecca for the indigent, would think again if they weren’t willing to work hard (relative to their capabilities). You wrote that that a lot of them find it difficult to get back into mainstream society. You could have programs that teach the homeless how to test the water and jump in. I realize that a lot of these people might have substance-abuse problems and mental illnesses. We can’t expect them to carry a briefcase and work a high-powered job, but they can do something to contribute to the community.

Here, in my community, the Barber National Institute has a work program for development-disabled individuals (I know they’re not the same demographic as Santa Monica homeless). They have some of their clients working at our local Racino (casino and racetrack). They also have assembly rooms at their facility where clients do simple, repetitive work for which it is difficult to find employees.

What are the sentiments of Santa Monica’s residents? I know many think the homeless are a nuisance, like fruit flies. But, some of them have as much wealth as a high-cap corporation. Are they interested in helping the situation? Or do they complain and ignore the homeless when they go for their power walks?

So, those are some of my ideas. You may have already thought of all of them.  But it occurred to me that instead of having a “problem” with homeless people, Santa Monica could turn it into something positive by becoming credible experts, because it doesn’t look like the homeless are going to stop coming.

Thank you for taking the time to explain the homeless situation to me. There are probably a lot of people, like me, who think the solution is easy. Now I understand how complex the problem is. If I can help you in any way (pro bono, of course), please let me know.

Ann Silverthorn
(I stayed at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel when I was in Santa Monica.)

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If you’ve read this far, you are probably concerned about the homeless situation in Santa Monica.

If you’d like to e-mail Kevin, you can reach him at kevin@mckeown.net.

If you want to know more about Kevin, visit: www.mckeown.net.