In Tuesday evening's meeting, City Council voted to extend the local emergency on Homelessness through May of 2025, signaling to the state that we are in fact, still in a crisis.
The new director of Housing and human services, Heather Averick was supposed to present the data and new initiatives, but the presentation was shelved, lost in the fog, to make time for the overwhelming number of folks who wanted to comment on the City’s impending Israeli-Gaza resolution.
So, we never got Ms. Averick’s full presentation, but the report was published and I have to honestly say that what’s in action is refreshing and promising.
In 2022 Santa Monica hired the consulting firm Moss Addams LLP to analyze and research the effectiveness of the city’s approach to homelessness. The report issued in November of 2022 had some excellent recommendations, and I’m delighted to see that the city has enacted many of them.
It’s very inspiring: A dedicated encampment clean-up team. Teams of trained mental health professionals working directly police officers to assist mentally ill people in a productive way. Lots of new homeless housing enacted and on the way. So so much more.
Not the least of which was creating a Director of Housing and Human Services position and hiring Ms. Heather Averick in that role to lead the efforts.
I haven’t seen the ‘Performance Measurement Framework’ that Moss Addams called for. That seems particularly important in understanding the effectiveness of the current strategies, and both the City and Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. declined to comment for this column. So, if the data is there, I can’t see it.
But overall it’s really promising and I encourage you to read the report.
When I speak with clinicians and support staff in the community, they praise Santa Monica’s response and commitment to helping the unhoused. They speak to the leadership amongst the neighboring cities and a desire for other cities to follow Santa Monica’s lead.
In so many ways the City is doing what can be done — taking the situation very seriously. And yes, I think many of us don’t feel safe the way we used to. Monday’s attack by a homeless man on the beach gives all of us pause.
But we have to give credit where it’s due. Many of the initiatives created in response to the Moss Addams report are in their infancy and will take time to bear fruit. But I can’t help feeling like the issues are so much bigger than our small city can meet.
We don’t have the resources to house all of the people that show up on our terminating bus and train lines. We don’t have the staff to help ALL of those suffering from substance abuse and mental illness in our fair city…
But more than all of that, Santa Monica alone can’t create an economy where housing, and income and opportunity give everyone a chance at a decent life. Low-income housing initiatives fight against the prevailing economic forces of living in one of the nicest environments in the world, and the supply and demand inherent to that truth.
Are moving the goal posts of housing rights fair to everyone else and does that matter? What is fair anyway?
Locally and nationally, we are hurtling toward a breaking point. The inequality that has only risen in my lifetime continues to push those who are the neediest, out of reach of the resources to adequately live.
If it feels dystopian, I think that’s because it is. We are in our little bubble trying to do the right thing. But like a cancer we can only ignore the truth for so long. The homelessness crisis is a symptom of something greater and that something is affecting us all.
But we can’t not do the right thing, just because it feels fruitless, because these are real people, who need help.
What will it take for our society to remember how to take care of one another? Other countries aren’t suffering in quite this way. How many air craft carries would it take to properly house and support the many Americans who are mentally ill and need help?
How bad does it have to get?
Or do we continue to hide, the rich and the poor, living in alternate universes only vaguely sharing resources and otherwise watching each other through windows and television dramas?
And so, the declared Emergency continues, with sincere efforts… sidelined by other dystopian world affairs, awaiting some sea change at the highest levels of our society, some watershed moment where we remember that we’re all human beings who deserve dignity and a chance at a meaningful life.
Miles Warner is a Santa Monica parent and resident
