City’s Compassion Faces Challenge

Has Santa Monica, which has long embraced liberal policies to help the homeless, come down with a case of compassion fatigue?

Complaints from residents, merchants and tourists have mounted in recent months about homeless people sleeping in the doorways of downtown businesses, panhandling aggressively and setting up camp in prime parkland near the Santa Monica Pier.

Getting much of the blame for what is widely perceived to be an increase in the homeless population is a plethora of free meals offered in three parks near the downtown area: Palisades, Memorial and Reed.

Most of the meals, a city report says, are provided by a patchwork of as many as 30 groups, many of them faith-based and almost all from outside the city.

The groups travel from such communities as Manhattan Beach, South-Central Los Angeles, Calabasas and Oxnard, attracting as many as 300 people at a meal with fruit, bagels and brown-bag sandwiches.

Under pressure from the city’s business community to do something, the Santa Monica City Council plans to vote tonight on two ordinances.

One would seek to limit free outdoor meals by requiring groups serving 150 or more meals to adhere to community event laws and county health standards. Some activists say such a rule would effectively ban the food giveaways.

The other proposal would make it illegal to sit or lie down in downtown doorways.

A small army of speakers has signed up to voice opinions on the subject, and the seven-member council is expected to engage in a long and lively debate. Activists also plan to hand out free meals at City Hall at 5:30 p.m., before the council meeting begins, as part of a “Brown Bag Justice” protest.

Moira LaMountain, a volunteer with several of the food providers, said she organized the protest because she considers the proposed laws outrageous.

She said that many low-wage workers also take advantage of the food programs because they must spend as much as three-quarters of their income on housing.

“At a time when government resources are stretched to the max, the Santa Monica City Council is contemplating an action that will criminalize private charity and compassion,” she said.

Council members are sharply divided in their views, and it is unclear how the vote might go.

“Santa Monica is a compassionate community and has provided a wide variety of services because of that,” said Councilman Richard H. Bloom, who favors the new ordinances. “When we have [these] feeding programs, it’s counterproductive to our continuum of care.”

In other words, he and his supporters reason, homeless people with full stomachs will be less motivated to seek out programs that could help them make the transition from the streets to a productive life, and to get treatment for mental disorders or alcohol or substance abuse.

For 2002, Santa Monica budgeted about $1.8 million from its general fund to support 22 social service programs that aid the homeless.

The city, with a population of about 88,000, estimates its homeless population on any given day at 1,000.

Opposing the ordinances is Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown.

“In the heat of election year posturing, we mustn’t forget our decisions affect people,” McKeown said. “If we ban sleeping in business doorways, will we move the homeless into residential neighborhood carports and laundry rooms?”

Nicholas Vrataric, executive director of the CLARE Foundation, which provides substance abuse treatment in Santa Monica, said residents and business owners have become frustrated as the homeless population has grown, even as tax dollars have supported an array of social services.

Vrataric is also chairman of the Westside Shelter and Hunger Coalition. “There’s an increased sense that the problem is not getting any better,” he said.

Many involved in the debate said the increasing homeless problem in Santa Monica reflects the failures of neighboring communities.

“Part of what we’re up against,” said Julie Rusk, the city’s human services manager, “is that other communities aren’t doing their part to address homelessness and to provide affordable housing and social services. A community like ours suffers an impact.

“We’re getting feedback,” she added, “that the impact is too great right now.”