Galanter Will Call Hearing to Gather Facts on Homeless

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter will bring police, social service workers, public health experts and residents together next month for a major public hearing on the homeless who have settled in Venice by the hundreds.

Galanter will announce plans for the hearing at a City Hall press conference this morning, The Times has learned. Galanter, who chairs the council’s Public Health, Human Resources and Seniors Committee, hopes to determine how many vagrants are living in Venice and what can be done to help them.

“We have to define the problem better than we have so far, so we know what the appropriate solutions are,” spokesman Rick Ruiz said. “We want to find out who the homeless are, what services they need and how to get the services to them.”

Ruiz said that Galanter’s office has been inundated with complaints about vagrants recently. Some residents say that the homeless, who have set up dozens of tents along the mile-long stretch of Venice beachfront, are committing crimes and harassing people who visit the beach or live nearby.

Residents have also charged that the problem is being ignored by City Hall. They say that the police have a lax attitude toward the homeless and that officials are ignoring their complaints. But Ruiz said that Galanter, who has been in office less than two months, is making the homeless a top priority.

“It’s certainly an alarming problem for people who live on the oceanfront or near that community,” Ruiz said. “But it is hard to say if the problem has grown because we just don’t have the information right now.”

Galanter said that her office hopes to hold its hearing on Sept. 10. The councilwoman said that she will look at all aspects of the homeless problem, including charges that vagrants are committing crimes against residents.

“We have to work out the best way of making sure that criminal behavior is not tolerated,” Galanter said. “Just because they are homeless doesn’t mean they are a threat. But being homeless is no excuse for criminal behavior.” Galanter said that she will work closely with community groups that have studied the problem. But she cautioned that there are no easy solutions.

“In a world of unlimited funds and unlimited land it might be possible to do things quickly,” Galanter said. “But the problem is that we only have . . . limited resources. What we need to do is to set some priorities.”

People who work with the homeless in Venice estimate that 350 to 1,000 vagrants live there. Rhonda Meister, director of St. Joseph Center, a private agency that feeds homeless people, said that there are usually no more than 350 vagrants in the small beach community. Mary Lee Gray, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana, said vagrants number less than 1,000.

A private task force studying the problem has claimed that there are actually thousands of vagrants living in the Venice-Santa Monica area. But officials dispute those figures. The task force is scheduled to deliver a report on the homeless at tonight’s meeting of the Venice Town Council.

The group has been meeting since July 9. Mary Ann Hutchison, who chairs the task force, said in an interview last week that too much attention has been focused on the vagrants who live on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

Hutchison said that the Venice-Santa Monica area receives only 2% of Los Angeles County funds earmarked for homeless people, even though 14% of the county’s vagrant population lives in the adjoining beach communities.

The group would not discuss others findings in advance of the meeting.