In response to growing criticism of the Casa Esperanza homeless shelter and homeless-related crime and inconvenience, Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider dusted the mothballs off the city’s subcommittee on Homelessness and Community Relations, appointed Councilmember Bendy White to fill the vacancy, and ordered it back in business. Among other things, the subcommittee has been charged with exploring the issue of hunger throughout the South Coast.
In recent months, criticism has mounted about the free lunch program offered at Casa Esperanza to shelter residents and nonresidents alike. Director Mike Foley estimated that up to 150 of the 200 free lunches Casa Esperanza serves a day go to people not staying at the shelter. Foley argues the free lunch program has been invaluable building trust with street people otherwise too distrustful to enter any rehab or social service program. Critics counter the free lunch program has been an “attractive nuisance” drawing “opportunistic vagrants” to the neighborhood.
Whether the reinvigorated subcommittee will be able to head off community unrest about homeless people remains to be seen. For now, City Attorney Steve Wiley has advised the City Council that they can’t legally reopen the shelter’s conditional-use permit — as members of the newly formed Milpas Community Association had sought. They argued that their neighborhood has been asked to absorb more than its fair share of the social burden associated with homelessness. Foley has expressed a willingness to suspend the lunch program, but only if and when a new site is secured. Members of the Planning Commission agreed, but wondered what would happen if the homeless went elsewhere throughout the city. The problem, they said, was regional in scope and could not be addressed by any one community or any one neighborhood. Agitation about the homeless is hardly restricted to Milpas Street. The Downtown Organization and the Chamber of Commerce will be holding a joint meeting to discuss the matter, arguing that street people are bad for business.
The council subcommittee was brought into existence two years ago over similar concerns and, in response, drafted a 12-point action plan. That included the passage of a new aggressive pandhandling ordinance as well as alternative giving program — “Real Change, Not Spare Change” — in lieu of giving to panhandlers. To date, these measures have borne little fruit. Foley said no merchants on Milpas Street currently offer customers a chance to donate to the alternative giving plan. And efforts to crack down on liquor stores selling fortified wines and malt liquor by the can have gone nowhere.
Comments
This is awfully Foley-centric of you, Nick.
downtownres (anonymous profile)
November 11, 2010 at 7:45 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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......
citti (anonymous profile)
November 11, 2010 at 12:28 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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.
Holly (anonymous profile)
November 12, 2010 at 11:05 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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.
Holly (anonymous profile)
November 12, 2010 at 11:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"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.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
November 12, 2010 at 3:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
November 13, 2010 at 8:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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.
====================
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.
eyewitness (anonymous profile)
November 14, 2010 at 8:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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?
Lars (anonymous profile)
November 18, 2010 at 11:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Some of you have a "noble hobo" mythology. Some of the homeless are active drug users or drug dealers. I see no reason why state St should welcome these individuals. I also do not like to see these aggressive panhandlers forming packs, which intimidates anyone who walks by. Often times, they will have pit bulls (which are very loyal and lethal dogs).
I do not like having to mentally arm myself just to walk down state St. I'm sure that our tourists do not like this dangerous feeling either. It won't be long until our weekend LA tourists stop visiting "because there are too many homeless." No one likes being harassed. They will quietly take their dollars elsewhere.
beerock (anonymous profile)
May 13, 2011 at 10:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)