Homeless Committee Reconvenes

This is awfully Foley-centric of you, Nick.

Just because other areas of the city are also affected by vagrancy, including homelessness, does not mean or should not mean that the problems in the Milpas area are allowed to continue. Why not have the feeding station be at Earl Warren showground (with a shuttle service there?) or at Bohnett Park? or at one of those churches that so urge the Milpas residents to suck it up? The Unitarian Church has coffee hour on Sunday mornings; it could be extended to a daily meal hour - and there are buses to that area and bus passes could be provided.

Casa Esperanza should keep to its mission of assisting the homeless. It's mission is: "Our mission is to assist homeless individuals and families achieve self-sufficiency, by helping as many as possible access the services they need to transition to stable employment and housing." Accessing services is not necessarily providing services, but is instead pointing to where services are. Mr. Foley seemed agreeable to doing that if there were another place for meal provision.

No doubt that street people are bad for business but when there are no immediate alternatives and people continue to enable......

I will never understand why it is so difficult for so many people to grasp this basic fact:

Robbery, assault, battery, burglary etc are all ILLEGAL acts. If someone is committing a crime, that individual needs to be arrested. Simple, yes?

Apparently not.

We instead continue whining about "those people" who we don't want to look at, and since it's still against the law to just round them all up and kill them (and I'm sure there are plenty of folks right here on these forums who would love nothing more than to do just that), we have to make up these "quality of life" crimes in order to find SOME way to sweep these unwanted people from sight.

The reason so many homeless Santa Barbarans are on Milpas is because they have been cleansed from other areas of the city. Like pieces on a chessboard, they are moved around in an unending effort to keep the city attractive to tourists and shoppers, businesspeople and housed residents.

As we are seeing, this doesn't work. Like a tube of toothpaste, if you squeeze hard, you can indeed empty the tube relatively quickly. However the toothpaste has to go somewhere, and while it's acceptable if wasteful to wash it all down the drain, it's illegal to do that to unwanted people. For the most part...

So Milpas is the drain du jour. Used to be the Fig Tree and Lower State. So while the city and its various agencies and independent contractors such as Foley, et al have done a great job rounding up the homeless and getting them out of sight of those areas, the unwanted humans had to go somewhere.

The only difference between a homeless drunk and a sheltered one is that the homeless one has to live his life out in public. ALL of his life is led out in public; sleeping, eating, drinking, elimination, vomiting, seizures, etc. All in public. We don't have any problem with drunks as long as they are hidden from view, or behind the wheel of an SUV on the Pass after a day of wine swilling in the Santa Ynez Valley. We don't want to look at drunks who are poor, homeless, and peeing in doorways.

Same goes for folks who aren't drunk, on drugs, etc. It's OK to live one's life as long as the details are not in view. The run of the mill homeless person may be doing nothing but walking down a street or sitting in a restaurant, but someone will find a way to complain about their "quality of life" simply because the person is breathing the air in the vicinity.

So we create new crimes and new bureaucracy to sort them through, while not enforcing existing laws prohibiting noise, assault, robbery, etc.

It has been ever thus, and will continue on until/unless we step back and realize that the blame game, warehousing, sweeping, cleansing and cracking down on people simply for being poor and in public just doesn't work.

As for the city-sanctioned panhandling program....er...the "Alternative Giving" jars that Foley and others who stand to benefit are advocating, good for those who have the courage to NOT put those in their businesses! Why should business owners become middlemen for gathering money to further fund the already bloated salaries of the executives on the Boards of city-contracted programs to sweep the poor from sight? Let Foley and his colleagues go out and earn their own money, on their own. If six figures isn't enough for them, that's too bad; these program providers should try living on Social Security, getting old and sick, having a disability, and sleeping under a freeway overpass. Shame on them for using businesspeople and other citizens to gather yet MORE money for them and their programs.

And why single out liquor stores, while at the same time we celebrate wineries and bars catering to college kids and tourists? Again...one brand of drunk is OK, the other is not.

The double standards in play are just astounding and deeply offensive to anyone with the ability to see what is being purveyed here. The city and its vested interests are very good at diverting people's notice towards the giant green head belching smoke, flames and doomsday proclamations, while pulling the curtain shut and telling us all to ignore the little man (actually MANY men and women) behind it, pulling the levers...

Life imitates fairy tales...only this is not funny, and it is about people's lives on all sides.

And if I ever encounter one of those jars, I will simply remember the admonishment to "not feed the trolls" and move on..and not do business there.

"And why single out liquor stores, while at the same time we celebrate wineries and bars catering to college kids and tourists?"

Because liquor store clientele are not as rich and physically attractive as the latter group. Nice cars and lots a skin go a long way in S.B.

Very true Pinatubo, but lower state street winos are less likely to kill people because they don't drive cars.

Drunks and booze will always be with us, but when a culture celebrates inebriation it isn't a good thing.

I concur with bill clausen's remarks and Holly's :

folks who aren't drunk, on drugs... run of the mill homeless person may be doing nothing but walking down a street or sitting in a restaurant, but someone will find a way to complain about their "quality of life" simply because the person is breathing the air in the vicinity.

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These problems basically have nothing to do with the issue of "homelessness". Homeless people are people who have been kicked to the side by the housing markets. AMONG THAT GROUP there are drunks etc. But same goes for the housed. Quite a few - the vast majority -- of homeless are not severely alcoholic, substance abusing, or psychiatrically emplicate. QUite contrary to what Mike Foley has been quoted as saying. So he is partly to blame for the negative stereotyping.

Yeah there are SOME homeless who are drunk etc. But they bug no one like other homeless.

File this whole trip under ignorance, racism, witchunts, etc. Truly pathetic the way this town is distinguishing itself as more concerned with teh 3 or 4% of bad actors and so dispassionate.

The whole lot of em.

Playing "dodge the unpredictable homeless guy" on State Street makes going downtown, especially after dark, a total bummer -- especially for families with young kids.

Multiple cops should be patrolling State Street between Victoria and Cabrillo Blvd on foot 24 hours a day. Nobody should be allowed to camp out on State Street. Nobody should be allowed to panhandle on State Street. Nobody should be allowed to stalk State Street yelling obscenities and accosting innocent bystanders.

Why should a handful of degenerates be allowed to ruin our beautiful downtown as well as several other prominent parks around town?