Homeless Hit by Service Cuts Get Reprieve from New Laws

By Erica Williams
Lookout Staff

Feb. 18 -- A stagnant economy is likely to swell the ranks of the homeless Downtown just as deep cuts anticipated in social programs will limit their access to services, Bayside merchants learned Tuesday.

The news comes at a time when a recent ordinance aimed at cracking down on the homeless in Downtown is going unenforced because of legal challenges, police said.

Merchants got the grim news at a meeting of the Bayside District board's Public Safety Committee Tuesday, where committee members voted to recommend to the full board that the group lobby the City to maintain at current levels funding for homeless services.

“Unless social service agencies and organizations remain funded at historic levels, the homeless will have neither the short-term solutions eliminated by the City of Santa Monica last year, nor the comprehensive care solutions Santa Monica has traditionally provided," said a draft statement prepared by committee member Rob Rader:

“We fear such an outcome will have devastating and possibly deadly consequences for the homeless, including many families,” the statement said. “Such a punitive result was not Bayside’s intent.”

Donna Gentry of the Gentry Group agreed with Rader and other committee members. “We have to let the City know that Bayside meant what it said,” she said, referring to the group’s stated commitment to help the homeless with a hand up not a handout.

The committee’s vote came after sobering news from John Maceri, executive director of Ocean Park Community Center, a network of shelters and services for the homeless. Maceri said that his group recently got word from the State that it will lose an estimated $100,000 in funding for just one of the programs it offers. And more cuts will likely follow.

Maceri called homelessness a “national disgrace” and reminded the committee that the problem was not unique to Santa Monica. Along with Tod Lipka of Step Up on Second, a group serving the mentally ill homeless, Maceri urged businesses to begin collaborating with churches and other service organizations to begin thinking in new ways about how to address the homeless problem.

“Arresting people because they don’t have a place to sleep is not the best use of police resources,” Maceri said.

But Maceri acknowledged that it could prove difficult to find willing partners.

“One of the problems is we have people [groups] who are very resistant to doing anything other than what they want to do,” he said.

Nevertheless, by the end of the meeting the committee seemed optimistic about the idea of forging new alliances with their former foes.

“It’s really exciting, the idea of working together,” said committee chair Ann Greenspun.

Meanwhile, committee members were disappointed to learn from Sgt. Ira Rutan and Lt. Carisse Lindsey that ordinances meant to curb feeding the homeless in public areas and prohibit overnight sleeping in storefront doorways Downtown were not being enforced because the laws are being contested.

But Rutan said community service officers, who are out at 6 a.m. seven days a week, find “almost no one sleeping in doorways on the Promenade” though people had shifted to sleeping on benches on the streets, which is legal.

In addition, Rutan said, the homeless liaison conducts sweeps of Third Street every two hours overnight and urges people to move on if they’re in a doorway.

As far as feeding programs go, Rutan told the committee that the police cannot enforce health codes. Those fall under the jurisdiction of the County Health Department, which has limited resources and is facing severe budget cuts.

City police, Rutan said, could only monitor the situation in the parks and other public areas where the homeless are being fed and encourage regulatory compliance.

Just because laws are on the books, doesn’t mean that police have the authority to enforce them, Lindsey said.