A group of local, regional and state elected officials gathered in Santa Monica on Friday at the behest of local restaurants for a panel discussion on the homelessness crisis.
Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock, Malibu Public Safety Director Susan Dueñas, former Santa Ana councilmember Michelle Martinez and District 51 assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur were moderated in their discussion by the Santa Monica Daily Press (SMDP) Editor in Chief Matthew Hall at the 1212 restaurant on the 3rd St Promenade.
The event was a joint venture of Hospitality Santa Monica (a group of local restaurants working with the California Restaurant Association) and the Daily Press. The panel’s aim was to focus on successful strategies and started by asking how Malibu has achieved a reduction in homelessness for several years.
"That's a big question [but] it won't work for everybody. Because every city is different. Everybody's homelessness problem is different," Dueñas said. "What I say our secret sauce is, was when I was able to hire somebody whose sole job is basically to coordinate the resources every day on the ground.
In addition to a specific staff member, it uses legislative measures to enforce private property rights, encourages individuals in the community to step up and uses its resources to make multiple contacts with homeless individuals in the city.
"Overall, our approach has been a tough one, because we have a lot of outreach, we have a great team through the People Concern, and we're out there meeting [and] interacting with these folks regularly and offering help. But at the same time, we emphasize that we have laws, we have rules and we will enforce them at a certain point," said Dueñas.
Next it was Brock’s turn to respond. "I believe we [the City of Santa Monica] spent $42.7 million cumulatively on combat and homelessness in our community, that includes police time, fire department time [and all] of the public safety agencies. That's an incredible amount of money to spend for an 8.3 square mile with 93,000 or so residents. So we have a significant issue," Brock said.
He made reference to the Pathway Home program and the Therapeutic Transportation program, adding that if former drug addicts can demonstrate to a judge that they are making efforts to rehabilitate through their social service agencies, they can avoid further incarceration. "If they're getting clean, they're getting back on their feet, then they won't go to jail," he said.
Answering the same question, Martinez spoke of Santa Ana utilizing the legal system to push itself to develop solutions and as the Special Master working on the ongoing settlement between homeless advocates and Los Angeles, she said courts can be used to hold everyone accountable for their efforts.
She also praised the work of both Malibu and Santa Monica, but reiterated that, "When you look at a city like Malibu and you look at a city like Santa Monica, the population is very different. Santa Monica has a lot more unhoused people than Malibu. It was no different in Orange County."
Zbur focussed initially on funding. "The role of the state is that we provide funding for local jurisdictions. Homelessness is primarily a local issue that we charge our local governments to solve. And that presents challenges, obviously, because it's not hyperlocal," he said.
"We have people who have issues with the fact that cities are actually doing the right thing, and providing services actually [acts as a] magnet for folks that are unhealthy because they need the services. And … one aspect there is funding," he said, adding, "We need to figure out how to do more with less and we need to figure out how to provide the funding that the local jurisdictions need."
Zbur also focused on prevention efforts and said about 10,000 people are made homeless per year and only about 8,000 are taken off the streets.
When asked what legislators can do to provide grassroots relief to businesses who are dealing with homelessness every day, Zbur once again returned to funding.
"We need to look at the sort of funding mechanisms that we have. In some cases, the obstacle of transitioning folks into housing is the fact that we don't actually have the transitional housing that's available to allow the services to take place," he said. "The role of the state is to understand and support the efforts that are being done at the local and the regional level and make sure that the funding that we're providing is appropriate to support the strategies that are occurring at the local level."
Dueñas offered a somewhat more focussed perspective. "I wouldn't count on the federal or state government … We have the power to solve our problems. The resources that come from the state and government at this time, are not sustainable sources of revenue, or ongoing revenues that are in perpetuity to address this problem," she said, adding, "This is a regional problem. It's not just one city and the next city's problem. It's everyone's problem in this region. And until we all do our fair share, we're not going to address this problem holistically."
This was not a point of view that Brock completely agreed with. "I will take a slight disagreement with our esteemed assemblymember, it is a state issue, it is a federal issue as well. And that's extremely important."
One audience question was focussed at the individual level, what can an individual do? What can somebody do to try and move this situation forward?
Brock responded by saying everyone should ask for help and encouraged residents to talk to their government elected officials and legislators. However, Hall pointed out that people were already doing that, so what else can be done?
To which Zbur responded, "The bottom line is, there's not a silver bullet on this … And I don't think there's anyone at any level of government that doesn't recognize that this is a huge crisis. We need to do everything we can to deal with that and deal with it in a way that is consistent with our values," he said.
"And that means getting the folks that are homeless because of mental health and substance use issues, getting the care they need, getting them off of the streets, it is not compassionate, to allow people to stay on the streets and actually live there for long periods of time when we don't actually take steps to sort of transition them into housing," Zbur said before bringing up funding once again.
Dueñas also responded, "Coming in as the Director of Public Safety, I'm kind of looking at this differently than an elected official. And the one thing I see happening in Malibu that maybe is happening in other places, too, is that people are exhausted by the [number of ] crimes and reporting them and the hassle that is, so they stopped reporting it … We have to have the same rules for everybody … Sometimes I feel it's almost like a parent-child relationship, they’re always getting into trouble and it's just so exhausting, but you can’t let them get away with it, because that doesn't help anybody."
