City Services Lure More Homeless, Chamber Contends

Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

Oct. 26 -- At Tuesday's night's City Council meeting, the Chamber of Commerce plans to fire the first shot in an impending battle over City-funded homeless services that businesses contend are only worsening a lingering vagrancy problem.

The action is planned to coincide with the council’s annual review of Santa Monica's $8 million homeless services system, which is funded in part by $1.8 million in City grants and which the chamber claims is improving the lives of the less fortunate at the expense of the local economy.

The city’s social safety net, the chamber argues, is not only accommodating the vagrants who frighten away customers with aggressive panhandling, create unseemly smells and monopolize public benches, but the success of the system is making things worse by luring even more homeless to Santa Monica

“From the standpoint of businesses and residents, the problems with homelessness are staying the same or getting worse (as per City and Chamber surveys)," said the chamber’s outline of grievances it plans to present to the council. "The high level of services provided by the City of Santa Monica is believed to draw the homeless to the area.

“The Chamber and local businesses are going to testify at the hearing that although the $1.8 million the City currently spends on its continuum of care is delivering services to the homeless, the issues of the business community and residents are not being adequately addressed.”

The issues are easy to grasp, said Kathryn Dodson, president and CEO of the chamber. “It’s dirty, it smells, you can’t sit on the benches, (customers and visitors) get approached (for money or food), homeless people are sleeping in the doorways (of businesses) and people are afraid to use the parks,” which have become the home of the homeless, Dodson said.

The cost of doing business in Santa Monica has “increased” with the added burden of extra security and cleaning services necessitated by the presence of the homeless in the Downtown and the Third Street Promenade, according to the list of grievances.

The homeless report issued by City staff to the council last week touts the placement of nearly half the 2,773 homeless served in 2002-03 in a temporary or permanent home and securing a stable job for 25 percent.

But the chamber disagrees that things are getting better and questions the effectiveness of two ordinances passed last year regulating food providers who hand out free meals to the homeless in City parks and banning sleeping in Downtown doorways posted with the appropriate signs.

“The report comes out every year. It just passes as matter of fact, and we just want to stand up and say, ‘What’s going on?’” Dodson said. “They’re not addressing the big issues affecting residents and businesses.”

While the report found that the number of food providers dropped from 26 to six over the past year and that police ticketed 52 vagrants for sleeping in Downtown doorways, Dodson said the business community remains skeptical about the law's effects.

“We don’t know what the effects are, they just started enforcing (the laws)," Dodson said. "We're hoping that they will help, but from what we're hearing right now, most of them (businesses) don’t think it’s helped. I haven’t seen a decrease in complaints.

“Most of the visitors just hate it, and they say they’re never coming back, or they’re going to go to the Grove," Dodson said. "A lot of them say they won't come back unless we solve this problem."