By Jorge Casuso

February 12 -- Imagine a team of “ambassadors” who patrol the streets to keep them safe and clean. Or a parking meter you feed instead of handing your spare change to a panhandler. Or a “hygiene facility” where the homeless can drop in to shower and wash their clothes.

Those are three key ways to address the homeless problem in Downtown Santa Monica according to an Urban Institute report released by the City last month.

The Bayside District Corporation has already proposed a clean and safe or “ambassador” program for the district and currently administers the Dolphin Change program where spare change has added up to $125,000 in grants to local homeless social service organizations since its launch in 1995.

Despite the efforts, business owners and employees complained to consultants that the homeless remain a major stumbling block to conducting business Downtown, which is home to one-third of Santa Monica’s homeless, according to a countywide census two years ago.

They lie on sidewalks, sleep in doorways, beg for money, occupy restaurant tables and street benches, even urinate on merchandise displayed outside. These were among the specific complaints listed.

“Business attitudes reflected a desire to help with the problem if viable approaches can be found as well as a feeling of being ‘fed up’ and frustrated,” the consultants wrote. “Most business people wanted the problems they described to go away, however that could be made to happen.”

Some of the biggest complaints focused on public safety, which was hampered by slow police responses and an unwillingness on the part of business owners and workers to take time off to address a problem that won't go away, consultants said.

The feeling was that the Police Department’s Homeless Liaison Program (HLP) team worked “very hard,” responding to 2,400 incidents and making 2,900 periodic checks on property and open space citywide. Still, consultants wrote, the team “was not having the effects desired.”

The police department also was widely viewed as not doing enough, despite spending more than $2 million in the 2005-06 fiscal year on the homeless citywide and reportedly making 1,796 arrests of transients across Santa Monica, not including citations issued.

“People cited slow response times when they did call the police, which they also said the police deny,” consultants wrote. “One suggestion was that business people be able to email their requests for assistance, which would leave a timed and dated paper trail.

“Another response we heard several times was that business people usually did not call the police, although an incident warranted doing so, because it would take too much of the owner’s or employee’s time, and ‘wouldn’t do any good anyway.’”

While the Downtown business community is helping to provide jobs for those who live on the streets, it should “play a much more prominent role in the city’s homeless reduction efforts,” consultants said.

One key way to improve the appearance of Downtown and make the streets safer would be to establish “Clean & Safe Teams,” or ambassadors, which could operate 24 hours, seven days a week.

The cleaning teams would sweep and power wash sidewalks, empty trash bins, pick up garbage and human waste and erase graffiti, consultants said. Bayside officials have been pushing a similar proposal.

The safety teams would patrol on foot and bicycles, serving “as an extra set of ‘eyes and ears’ for law enforcement and property owners,” link the homeless with service providers and “prevent vandalism and other undesirable behavior,” consultants said.

The report also suggested ways to reduce panhandling by engaging businesses in “a serious and sustained anti-panhandling campaign.”

The campaign would focus on educating the public about where most panhandled money goes, how it enables the homeless to stay on the streets and what alternative modes of giving are available.

While the Bayside District’s Dolphin Change program provides an alternative by allowing strollers to drop change into life-sized dolphin banks, “most people felt it doesn’t work,” consultants said.

“There is little or no sustained explanation of what the dolphins are there for, they aren’t in enough places, and also possibly the direct beneficiaries are not clear or personal enough.”

One suggestion was to follow a model established by Baltimore’s downtown district, which installed old parking meters in many locations, especially where panhandlers congregate.

“When a person inserts a coin and turns the handle, the needle does not go from 0 to 30 minutes – instead, it turns from Despair to Hope,” consultants wrote, noting that the proceeds are distributed to homeless assistance programs.

Whether it’s dropping change in meters along the Promenade, in hotels, stores and restaurants, or handing donations at tables staffed by volunteers from social service programs, educating members of the public will be the key to success, the report stated.

“Alternative giving opportunities would need to involve posters, flyers, and handouts explaining why giving to panhandlers does not help people leave homelessness,” the report stated.

The final key recommendation in the Urban Institute report is to establish a hygiene facility or drop-in center, or both, Downtown.

It is something that would be welcomed by the homeless, who “must improvise, go without bathing or washing their clothes, or resort to the inappropriate use… of public or quasi-public spaces to take care of their bodily needs,” the report said.

“To relieve pressures to use the restrooms of downtown businesses, or else to use the streets and business property as a bathroom, the business community should consider a hygiene center just for homeless people, in the downtown area,” the report concluded.