Santa Monica Community Responds to Recent HUD Grant

The Santa Monica Daily Press published today some responses from the community regarding the city’s recent $717,150 grant from HUD. This grant proposes to place 30 chronically homeless people who are dealing with alcoholism into housing.

The question the paper posed was this:

“What has to be taken into consideration by local officials to make a pilot program targeted to chronic homeless people, which helps pay their rent in free-market housing in Santa Monica, as successful as possible?”

Here are some community responses:

“First of all, what needs to be considered is the fact that these people should not be housed in Santa Monica, a prime real estate and high rent area. The money should be directed to the lower-rent areas. Many good citizens have had to leave Santa Monica due to rising rents and many good people can’t afford to relocate here for the same reasons. If these people can’t afford to live here, how can we, the taxpayers afford to house all these indigents here?”

“I strongly recommend that the homelessness program is linked somehow with the department of mental health to provide only psychiatry and medication for the people that are homeless.”

“Helping 30 people won’t work. Get 30 sober living houses and help 300 people get gradually back on their feet.”

“If you don’t require sobriety don’t even bother, don’t spend any money on it because it won’t do any good. A hand out and a hand up are two different things.”

Federal Government Awards $10 Million to 11 Cities to Create Supportive Housing for 555 People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness and Alcoholism

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced funding for a new initiative that will provide $10 million in two-year grants for 12 programs that will help people who have lived on the streets for long periods of time because of their addiction to alcohol. The program is called, “Housing For People Who Are Homeless and Addicted to Alcohol.” Here is the list of cities with the number of people they will help.

The City of Santa Monica was one of the 11 cities awarded, along with Chattanooga, Chicago, Contra Costa, Denver, Jacksonville, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, and Washington, D.C.

Interesting that the City of Los Angeles, with the largest concentrated chronic homeless population in the country was not included.

Here is the press release sent out by the City of Santa Monica:
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"The City of Santa Monica was recently selected as one of 10 communities nationwide to receive a federal grant to help combat long-term homelessness.
Officials from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will present the grant to City leaders on Monday, August 29, 2005 at 3 p.m. in the Council Chambers of Santa Monica City Hall.

The federal agency announced that Santa Monica will receive over $700,000 for rental subsidies and other costs over two years to provide permanent housing with supportive services to house 30 persons who are chronically homeless and addicted to alcohol. The focus of the grant is Santa Monica’s long-term homeless individuals who are living on the streets and who are addicted to alcohol. These individuals tend to have the highest utilization of public resources and services such as police, paramedics and hospital emergency rooms.

Officials from HUD will present the award to Mayor Pam O’Connor and other city leaders. Philip Mangano, the Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness who was appointed by President Bush to spearhead federal initiatives to reduce homelessness, is tentatively scheduled for the event.

The federal grant will provide the rental costs, and the City and homeless providers will provide a match for the supportive services needed to get them into housing and keep them off the streets. The City of Santa Monica and its partner agencies – CLARE Foundation, OPCC, New Directions, St. Joseph’s Center, Step Up on Second, Venice Family Clinic, LA County Department of Mental Health, local hospitals and others - will provide supportive services during a six-month period of stabilization before placing individuals in permanent housing and will continue the services after they are housed.

The approach to service delivery will be an expansion of the City’s Chronic Homeless Program, which began in July 2004. This model uses a multi-disciplinary team to strategically assess the needs of chronically homeless individuals and focus resources on interventions.

To date, the chronic pilot project has served 25 individuals, who have had an average time of homelessness of 12 years. Of these individuals, 10 are now permanently housed; 3 are in temporary housing with placements pending; 1 is on the street with placement pending; 8 are homeless and in the process of engagement; 2 are in jail or in the hospital; and 1 passed away."

And We Thought Anti-Panhandling Criminalized Homelessness; How About Just Labeling The Homeless Terrorists?

The federal government has issued an official warning that terrorists may pose as homeless people to conduct clandestine surveillance of buildings and mass transit stations. Click here to read article.

"In light of the recent bombings in London, it is crucial that police, fire and emergency medical personnel take notice of their surroundings, and be aware of 'vagrants' who seem out of place or unfamiliar," said the message.

The intended logic is that homeless people blend into an urban environment. And that terrorists posing as homeless people would not be noticed.

The feds are accurate that our society has ignored the plight of the homeless on our streets, and therefore, blend into our environment without being noticed. But to assume that any one of these homeless could be a potential terrorist?

If we are really that concerned that a homeless person might be a terrorist, let’s deal with the homeless problem by making sure people don’t have to live on our streets. So when we see a homeless person on our streets we are appalled that they are homeless, not scared that they could be a terrorist.

Will a Newly Highlighted Skid Row Encourage Change, Or Just More Of The Same?

With the recent L.A. homeless beatings garnering national attention, and the incredible increase of high-end loft dwellings being built in downtown, more and more people are talking about L.A.’s infamous “skid row.”

Carla Rivera, a Los Angeles Times writer, published an article today about skid row. It’s titled, “Near Downtown’s Glitter Lies a Civic Problem.” Click here for article (you need to be registered for the LA Times site.) She answers some basic questions: Where is skid row? Who lives on skid row? What is the history of skid row? How has skid row changed? Why is it called skid row?

She quotes local skid row “expert”, Don Spivack, who is the deputy administrator of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Her main point is found in the fourth paragraph:

“…the future of skid row looms as a huge question mark.”

There are other pertinent questions, however, that need to be addressed in order to solve this sad and embarrassing state of our city:

Where are these people (who live on the streets of skid row) coming from now? Carla has given us the history, but what about today’s skid row residents? Are they coming from the jails, a failed mental health system, being pushed out of existing low-income housing for the sake of high-end lofts, other areas of the county, of the country—all of the above?

If this is not a new phenomenon, why are we letting this persist for so long? Have we given up on this problem, these people? Are we in a state of “tolerating” this?

What are the solutions?

* Why don’t we use Chief Bratton’s strategy of policing where he finds the criminal hot spots and blanket those areas with resources—this is certainly a homeless hot spot, why don’t we blanket this area with resources?
* Why don’t we stop the influx of people entering skid row?
* Why don’t we allow the police to deal with the criminal element?
* Why don’t we provide enough permanent supportive housing for these people?

There are a lot more questions. We need to start asking questions that look toward the future—with solutions—rather than questions that ask about the past…

It’s Official: Panhandling In Atlanta Is Illegal

Atlanta’s Mayor Shirley Franklin signed an ordinance that was passed by the city council on August 15th. Click here to read article. This new anti-panhandling law targets specific tourist attractions in downtown Atlanta. It also makes it a crime to beg for money at night or near train stations or ATM machines.

Activists for the homeless said the ordinance is mean-spirited and criminalizes homelessness. The business community said it will encourage tourism, and make the streets more civil.

The media around the country have been tracking these deliberations. Many are wondering if this new ordinance is a sign of a trend within urban settings.

Deputy Mayor Is Committed To Solving Homelessness

I met with L.A.’s Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Housing, Robert (Bud) Ovrum, this afternoon. He recently accepted this new position, after being the CEO of LA’s Community Redevelopment Agency. (He even accepted a salary that was $100,000 less than his previous job.)

Before that, he was the City Manager of Burbank where he brought an economic development “miracle” by bringing in new business into the city, after aerospace companies took 20,000 jobs away from Burbank.

I was impressed with the Deputy Mayor’s commitment to solving the homeless problem in Los Angeles. He knows that downtown Los Angeles is overwhelmed with homelessness, and that the city and county need to do much more to solve the problem.

He told me that during a recent week of vacation, he was called or emailed at least once per day on L.A.’s homeless problem.

It’s good that homelessness has become a more significant issue on the new Mayor’s agenda.

“Battered and bruised -- by the city”

The Los Angeles Times, today, publishes an op-ed piece by ALICE CALLAGHAN who directs Las Familias del Pueblo, a nonprofit in downtown Los Angeles.

This is her response to the LA homeless beatings:
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"A PERVASIVE FEAR occupies the corners of Los Angeles' skid row, where it seems the homeless are everywhere, heaps of human despair sleeping in doorways and on the public sidewalks. However, it is not men wielding baseball bats, as happened last week, leaving one man near death, that frightens the poor of skid row. Using the bat assault as an excuse, police and private security guards have escalated efforts to clear the area, ordering the homeless to move off city sidewalks for their own good. The two 19-year-olds allegedly responsible for the beating are in custody, probably in the same jail that houses the homeless who are arrested for the high crime of being homeless.

For more than a year now, police have been enforcing an ordinance against sitting, sleeping or lying on public sidewalks. Security guards hired by property owners order people off public sidewalks and take the belongings of the homeless when they go inside a mission to eat. It is, the guards insist, abandoned property. The homeless must choose between losing their precious belongings and eating. Street maintenance workers, in violation of city policy, remove the belongings of the homeless, insisting that backpacks and rolled-up bedding stashed against a wall are abandoned. Shopping carts laden with belongings are dumped in the street and scooped into city trucks for disposal.

A self-appointed "temperance league" — organized by the Central City East Assn. and the Midnight Mission, walks the row once a month to "take back the streets." The marchers hand out leaflets that tout drug and alcohol recovery programs and list shelters for the homeless, as though warm, safe beds await all who choose to take advantage of the city's largesse.

If a shelter does have empty beds, it says more about the shelter than the person who refuses to sleep there. In fact, few beds are available on any given night. There may be an appearance of a lot of space, but most shelter beds in skid row have been designated for use in long-term programs. The police can lean on a shelter on a particular night to take in one or two more people, but that doesn't begin to meet the need.

Every affordable permanent housing unit on skid row has a waiting list. A dilapidated hotel in the downtown area rents for upward of $750 a month. The monthly general relief payment to this city's poorest is $223. Even if skid row residents found employment at minimum wage, they still would not be able to afford housing.

Two men wielding baseball bats are not nearly as frightening as a city that fails to address the serious lack of affordable housing for its poorest and most vulnerable."