Dear Editor,
The Daily Press article “Former addict comes clean about homelessness crisis in new book” (June 24, 2024) provides insightful first-person support for conclusions many have reached about homelessness, drug abuse, and crime in Santa Monica.
Specifically, while he was homeless, addicted, and sleeping on Skid Row in downtown LA, the author recounts “taking the bus to Santa Monica” to commit crimes. (According to his Twitter account, he was “off the streets for good” in 2016, which was the year Metro train stations opened here.)
“I really saw zero consequences for doing things like professional shoplifting, getting high in public, petty theft … the only services that I was really provided were [a] free cell phone, free needles and free crack pipes,” the former homeless addict recalled. “Those three things, they do really help someone on drugs that has no intention of stopping drugs, but there [were] really no resources for me to get off drugs.”
The authors’ lived experiences dovetail with Santa Monica Police statistics showing homeless suspects consistently account for over two-thirds of arrests here, as well as with news reports detailing out-of-town criminals targeting Santa Monica, freely committing crimes if they see no consequences for doing so, and the curse of ineffective homeless services facilitating continued destructive behavior. Indeed, in the Daily Press article the memoir’s author flatly says “a lot of policies are actually just enabling” the related epidemics of homelessness and addiction, adding that housing plays only a “small role” compared to what “pro-housing politicians” seem to believe.
“If you give someone that’s addicted to fentanyl a free apartment . . . It’s not going to fix anything,” he says, arguing instead for long-term treatment to beat the addiction.
It may be useful to add that this former homeless addict has expressed similar views in venues beyond the memoir described in the Daily Press article.
For example, in his Substack blog post titled “The Secret To Ending Homelessness: It’s not about giving away free apartment units” he rejects the notions that lack of housing and warm weather explain the rise in California homelessness, while in an opinion column for the NY Post he points to harm reduction programs as “an all-encompassing support system for drug addicts” and says diminished police backing and fewer criminal prosecutions have created “thousands of homeless addicts with no incentive to get clean.”
In a post at another site he flatly states “no-strings-attached housing for a fentanyl addict is just an oversized coffin.”
Meanwhile, on his Twitter account (now X.com), he confesses that he “needed to be incentivized to quit. Not only w/ rewards, but consequences,” recommends offering homeless addicts a choice of mandated treatment or jail, and estimates he traded “80%” of the food stamps he received for drugs.
Sadly, Santa Monica and LA County officials seem perfectly content with the failed conventional wisdom that, based on both the author’s experience and residents’ observations, is “actually just enabling” more problems with homeless addicts here.
Peter DiChellis, Santa Monica
