Council Could Decide Fate of Homeless Facility Tuesday

By Erica Williams
Staff Writer

August 11 -- Faced with bitter opposition from area residents and a looming financial deadline, the City Council Tuesday night will likely decide the fate of a homeless services shelter in the Pico Neighborhood.

The City has until next Monday to ante up the $7.4 million needed by the Ocean Park Community Center to acquire and rehabilitate a two-story vacant office building at 1751 Cloverfield Boulevard or risk forfeiting a $200,000 deposit currently in escrow, according to the staff report.

The race to beat the deadline has spurred charges by opponents and some council members that the City has tried to rush approval of the project, which will offer 55 transitional beds and social services to more than 200 homeless people daily.

"I thoroughly believe this needs more airing," said Councilman Herb Katz, who will be out of town when the vote is cast. "They never went beyond Pico," he said, referring to the outreach that failed to include Sunset Park, where he lives.

Councilman Bob Holbrook, who has received more than 100 calls and emails on the issue, said he didn't know OPCC and the City "had settled on a site" until he started receiving emails from proponents.

"The first I heard about it was from proponents," Holbrook said. "The only other thing it’s similar to is (Santa Monica College)… They don’t tell anyone… They move fast when they see something they want."

But other City officials deny that the project is being rushed through under the public radar in a city that prides itself on its open (and often lengthy) deliberative public process. Real estate transactions, officials contend, are normally conducted behind closed doors.

"We always have this tension between the real estate folks and the outreach people," said Judy Rambeau, who is Assistant to the City Manager for Community Relations. "Real estate deals are never done in the open. Part of what's driving it datewise relates to escrow.

"We wouldn't do outreach if we didn't want to hear and do mitigations," said Rambeau. “We were very deliberative about the outreach to the community for this project. This is more outreach than has been done on a property acquisition than I can remember in the six years that I’ve been here.”

Mayor Richard Bloom also denied that the City was rushing the project through with scant public notification or input. He noted that OPCC’s “focused outreach” began “about a month ago” and that acquisition talks have been ongoing for 10 months.

“We’re being prudent,” Bloom said of the push to purchase the property now, adding that the City and OPCC are faced with a “real world” in which sellers do not wait for years to sell their property.

“It would be very nice if we had the luxury of long periods of time in which to consider real property acquisition,” Bloom said, “but the reality is we do not.”

The City, Bloom said, is faced with the difficult task of “balancing the reality of the property transaction with the public’s right and need to know.”

Holbrook, however, believes it is premature to enter into a real estate transaction before the City has given a go-ahead on the funding needed.

"The unusual thing is that you would enter into escrow dependent upon what the council decides to do," said Holbrook, noting that OPCC must rely on the City for the lion's share of the funding.

Bloom called opponents’ claims of inadequate notice a strategy to defeat the project, noting that the site has been under consideration since November, when it as placed as an item on the Consent Calendar.

The Pico Neighborhood Association, Bloom said, has been vehemently opposed to placing the shelter at the Cloverfield and Michigan site since it learned from OPCC of its intent to purchase the property at the PNA’s July 10 meeting.

“I don’t think this is so much about notice as it is opposition," the mayor said. "I think there’s a campaign to defeat this proposal, and it’s a campaign designed to whip up people’s emotions, and it has been somewhat successful in doing so.”

PNA co-chair Peter Tigler contends that opponents are not only frustrated with the rushed process, they are angry with the City's priorities.

“There is a ground swell of support all over the city for our cause that goes beyond the Pico neighborhood," Tigler said. “I think people are fed up with the social service agenda that this City has embarked upon that takes money and gives it to non-residents, when we have residents who are needy of it.”