THE Homeless Backlash : Business People and Homeowners Are Pressuring Politicians to Cut Back on Meals and Discourage Loitering as the Numbers of the Needy Increase

As the lines outside the soup kitchens and inside the shelters grow, so do the neighborhood discontent and the political disenchantment.

The problem has grown to the point where homeless advocates and social service workers say political pressure on elected officials is generating a backlash against street people, which is resulting in a reduction of feeding programs and other services.

The effects of the rising unpopularity and overall numbers of the homeless are being felt throughout Los Angeles County, but particularly in the Westside, where the weather, the affluence and a host of social service programs serve as a magnet for a homeless population that probably exceeds 10,000.

In West Hollywood, which budgets more than $2 million for social service programs and is considered among the most tolerant of cities in Los Angeles County, the City Council voted in September to move the community’s expanding free-meal program out of a public park. The growing lines had drawn complaints from businesses, residents and senior citizens who said the presence of street people discouraged recreational use of the park.

Several council members also said the coalition should no longer offer a free meal to everyone, suggesting instead restrictions to exclude suspected freeloaders, drug abusers and prostitutes.

Program Scaled Back

In Santa Monica, a popular noontime feeding program in Ocean Park has been cut back by more than 100 meals each day because of neighborhood complaints about the swelling ranks of homeless who sleep in doorways and panhandle outside stores, restaurants and offices.

The mayor of Santa Monica and the president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce have called for an increase in police enforcement for street people, asked for a ban on sales of cheap wine and suggested mounting a campaign requesting that the public ignore panhandlers and donate money only to social service groups.

And in Beverly Hills, far from a haven for the homeless, police there have blamed several recent crimes on the growing ranks of the homeless and have asked patrol officers to walk through city parks and keep street people from loitering. The affluent city does not offer any programs for the homeless, preferring instead to donate money to an agency that provides food, shelter and clothing outside Beverly Hills’ boundaries.

“The frustration is growing because the numbers (of street people) are getting so big that you can’t even begin to make a dent in it,” said Susan Dempsey, executive director of Step Up On 2nd, an agency that provides referral, counseling and housing services for the mentally ill in Santa Monica. “It’s created a lot of tension and the pot is boiling. People are saying that we’ve had enough, and they’re getting angry.”

Eligibility Issue

Some homeless workers go even further, saying that Westside politicians, despite their generally liberal outlook, are trying to distance themselves from homeless issues. They contend that suggestions to regulate who is eligible for free food, such as have been made by some members of the West Hollywood City Council, skirt the real problem of how best to provide meals to hungry street people.

“A few years ago the city asked the community to come up with a way to provide food to the hungry because they realized the need for it,” said Michael Dean, head of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition. “But homelessness and feeding the hungry just (aren’t) trendy now. The people on the City Council asking for restrictions are, in effect, taking food out of the mouths of hundreds of people.”

Volunteer workers for the West Hollywood food program are upset because the council moved the free-meal program to Plummer Park from a local church more than two years ago to make it easier for the city to regulate. Rather than continue to meet the needs of the growing homeless population, the workers say, the council is reneging on its promise.

Second Forced Move

“This will be the second time they have thrown us out of somewhere, and they’re not going to get rid of a political problem just by moving it somewhere else,” said Ted Landreth, a volunteer. “I think its just a matter of people not wanting to be bothered, and I can’t understand why (politicians) just cave in and pretend that, by moving the program, everything is going to be OK all of a sudden.”

However, local officials and business leaders see it differently. They said that the cities are being unfairly overburdened with street peopleand that they are doing their best to make up for the lack of county, state and federal funds.

Sandra Jacoby Klein, a psychotherapist and member of West Hollywood’s Human Service Commission, said the main problem facing municipalities with a tradition of providing programs for the needy is that the lines are growing beyond the cities’ capacity to help.

“One of the problems is that (cities) make decisions about what people should have rather than asking them what they need,” she said. “They’ll help people, and then it will get out of hand, and then they’ll pull back again.

“A city needs to have limits on what it’s willing to do, and the programs that they fund need to have guidelines. But it’s a very frustrating process. You want to feed the people who are hungry, but you also don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

This summer, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took away cost-of-living increases from the county’s 50,000 welfare recipients, most of whom are single homeless people and are ineligible for other sources of government funding.

Likewise, in July, Gov. George Deukmejian cut $116 million from the state budget earmarked for local mental health programs, money that Los Angeles and other counties say they needed to avert further cutbacks in social services. And earlier this year, Congress killed a $4.7-billion measure to provide emergency funds for the homeless, the war on drugs and a host of other social programs.

“The people who are left with the responsibility of managing the (homeless) problems are officials on the local level who lack the resources to deal with it,” said Dennis Zane, Santa Monica’s mayor. “The kind of mean-spirited politics that says there are winners and losers in the world has consequences for us all.

“It’s quite clear that in our community, the conduct of the homeless that upsets people is related to alcohol use and panhandling money to get alcohol. We’re aware of the difficulties of the homeless people themselves. . . . They have as much right to enjoy the parks--but not to threaten anybody else.”

Program for Santa Monica

Zane, backed by the local business community, has offered a multitiered program to deal with Santa Monica’s booming homeless population. He said that during the past summer there was a noticeable increase in the number of altercations between residents and the homeless.

To counteract the problems of overaggressive panhandling and alcohol abuse among the street people, Zane has suggested that the city hire unarmed security guards to patrol homeless hot spots, create a special police detail that would strictly enforce laws against selling liquor to inebriates and launch a campaign urging the public to donate to social service agencies rather than to panhandlers.

“The backlash comes when people act in uncivilized ways,” said Duane Nightingale, president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. “Aggressive panhandling, people defecating in your doorway, urinating in your shrubs--those kinds of things are frightening, and we shouldn’t have to put up with them in this society.

“In Santa Monica, there are feeding programs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so there is no need for aggressive panhandlers, and we can’t tolerate them scaring away people from our businesses and hotels. What’s happened in the past is that Santa Monica has not been as tough as it should have been, and it’s gotten out of hand. And it’s high time we changed that image.”

Venice Revisited

It is not a new problem for many communities, just a growing one. Two years ago, Venice community leaders were up in arms over the hundreds of homeless camping on the beach. The St. Joseph’s Center, which provides a number of feeding, counseling and transitional housing programs for the homeless and the mentally ill, received much of the wrath of civic leaders.

A series of closed-door negotiations took place at which community leaders voiced anger that the center served as a magnet for the homeless and that social service workers were being insensitive to neighborhood residents. A compromise was hammered out that restricted the center to feeding 120 homeless people each day, with no more than 40 at each feeding. And prior-day reservations are required.

Catherine Wagar, assistant director of St. Joseph’s, said that without community support, “it makes it three times as hard to do the kind of programs that we want to do. So you need to find a balance. Homeowners have very legitimate concerns about their safety and their neighborhoods.”

Ed Edelman, chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, agreed. He said pressure on social service providers is increasing because of the escalation of the numbers of street people throughout the county.

“It’s unfortunate that there is this clash between homeowners and businesses over providing food for people in need,” he said. “But it seems that each jurisdiction that handles homeless will have to work to make sure that the complaints are kept to a minimum to avoid closure of a facility or worse.”

Food Program Cut Back

Recently, that happened in Santa Monica, where directors of the CLARE Foundation (Community Living for Alcoholics through Rehabilitation and Education) agreed to reduce its noontime feeding program at the Sober Inn from about 250 people to 150 per day. Foundation officials agreed to the cutback so they could expand CLARE’s other services.

“It’s getting to be a problem just getting anything for the homeless,” said Bill Torgeson, acting director of People in Progress, a private agency that offers programs for alcoholic indigents near Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. “The politicians go with what the public demands. The public wants to help, but they draw the line at their back yards.”

Sharing the Burden

West Hollywood Councilman Steve Schulte said each community needs to take responsibility for its own homeless problem so that liberal communities such as his are not overburdened. When they are, he said, they are left impotent to deal with the problem and must adopt restrictions, such as the one to remove the feeding program from Plummer Park.

“The parks cannot be a permanent place for this type of program because there are just too many other recreational uses,” he said. “I still feel very strongly that we need to keep this program in some fashion, but those who say that these programs don’t act as magnets for more (homeless) people are kidding themselves.”

Carol Nottley, chief executive officer of the CLARE Foundation, said the issue boils down to whether elected officials should attempt to regulate food programs for the hungry.

“How can you make distinctions about whether someone is deserving of a hot meal?” she said. “Our (criterion) is whether a person is hungry, and our feeling is that if people could afford a meal they wouldn’t be here. Some days we hand out balogna sandwiches. It’s hard to believe that people would travel all the way to Santa Monica for that.”