‘We are just trying to scramble as fast as possible to create programs to respond to an overwhelming problem.’

Just a year ago, Venice was being ripped apart by debate over what to do with the homeless, scores of whom were setting up tents along the community’s popular beach.

The sympathetic wanted to offer additional help, perhaps even open a no-cost restaurant for the homeless on Venice’s Rose Avenue near the St. Joseph Center, which provides numerous services for the down and out.

Others, appalled at the number of transients, demanded that the beach-dwellers be evicted and that no additional services be offered. The idea of opening a restaurant ignited tempers and threats of lawsuits. Rose Avenue, they warned, was becoming “Skid Rose.”

It took months of mediation, a handful of new programs and action by police to defuse an explosive situation.

On one hand, the homeless were swept from the beach; on the other hand, the restaurant will apparently be permitted. And it seems to be happening with less of the screaming and name-calling than filled the crisp Venice air last year.

The fundamental problem of the homeless, however, remains acute.

Police estimated that as many as 200 people were living in tents on the Venice beach last winter. Responding to complaints from merchants and residents, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter proposed a law that banned overnight sleeping on the beach, and by late January the homeless were driven off the sand.

The homeless did not go away, however. According to advocates; they simply spread through the neighborhoods of Venice and Santa Monica, sleeping in the places they have always slept: alleys, cars, rooftops, even trees.

Rhonda Meister, director of the St. Joseph Center, estimates that the number of homeless in the area has remained about the same or increased slightly in the last year. The center sees about 75 to 100 people a day, with 150 to 175 first-time visitors each month, she said.

“You can’t make homeless people invisible,” she said. “We are just trying to scramble as fast as possible to create programs to respond to an overwhelming problem.”

As the homeless were leaving the beach, Venice’s many warring factions joined in meetings with professional mediators from the Santa Monica-based Neighborhood Justice Center.

Although some issues were left unresolved in five months of talks, participants did find a way to agree on the restaurant for the homeless, which Meister said she hopes will open early next year.

Jeffrey Miles, a Venice resident and businessman who led opposition to the restaurant last year, said that through negotiations, his faction was able to extract promises of “safeguards and protections,” such as seating limits, a back-street entrance and transportation for the customers so they won’t loiter. The restaurant will be geared toward homeless families.

“I still don’t want it (the restaurant) there,” Miles said, “but when you face the inevitable realities of what limitations you have within the law . . . you have to work out the best deal you can for your community.”

In the last three to four months, meanwhile, residents and police say that about 20 or so homeless people have drifted back to the beach and sleep there nightly, despite police sweeps every dawn.