Area Could Be Charming

Instead of blaming others for spoiling your golden dream of life, you should follow the prescription you give for the people who our clownish and ignorant conservative politicians have deemed the Scapegoat of the Day: just move along.

I'm with Arthur. Enough is enough. Drive the bums out. Those who miss homeless drug addicts can move to LA.

Its the corporate takeover of State that's destroyed that district, not a few lost souls. I'll take Bohemia over kitschy charm any day.
If we drove the bums out, we'd have no "Conservative" politicians locally.

The trouble is the people who support the homeless do not see how they are destroying State Street because they never go down there. It is just plain shameful what the City is doing to deal with this problem. Build a place in the desert and ship them there for rehab. The ones that show up here prosecute them for vagrancy. This "Homeless" problem is costing us a fortune with medical costs, clean up and the deferred maintenance. I was at the train station, 50 tourists waiting for the train, Homeless person "Keith" walked out in front of all these people and urinated in plain sight of children, families... disgusting!!! And that is what you have people, homeless people who do not care about anything but the next drug, the next beer, the next thing they can steal, the next handout.

Contactjohn you only describe a subsection of the homeless population. Furthermore you cannot deport people from Santa Barbara just because you don't like their looks, or housing status. I'd sooner ship out hysterics to the desert than a buncha poor people. There but for the grace of God go we.
Once again, its the corporate business interests that have and are destroying Sate St., and every local business and organization in this community. Stop just looking at the symptoms and address the actual causes.

A more likely explanation is that it's only corporations with deep pockets that can survive on State Street as the homeless zombies drive away business.

EZK: What is wrong with wanting to live in a city with clean, safe streets? Wanting that does not make me someone who "hates their looks or housing status". My version of how to make the transients go away in 6 easy steps: 1. it’s repulsive to visit State Street these days. I never go there anymore. How many others feel this way and therefore also avoid downtown? 2. Now add that to the group of people who don't shop downtown anymore because they are trying to save money to keep their existing homes, eat, and pay bills. 3. How long can merchants and business owners, corporate or not, survive without customers? 4. Witness the increasing number of empty storefronts on Lower State and the increasing number of transients on Upper State. Just yesterday while at the Hope Street B of A's ATM, I was accosted by a transient. Let me tell you that was very uncomfortable. 5. How long before Upper State becomes as unpalatable as downtown and those businesses also fail? 6. Once Santa Barbara has been rendered an economic ghost town, then voila! The transients will have no one left to harass and then they will leave.

I would have thought EZK would have jumped on his own solution: drive the bums out, no more conservatives on council. But I guess he'd rather chastise the rest of us on accepting peeing in public as bohemian, desirable ambiance, and keep up the whine about conservatives on council.

You're one pithy example of one occurence does not change the fact that the majority of the businesses on State Street are not unique businesses. people can find these corporate stores anywhere: Oxnard, Camarillo, LA. They are not special, they are not unique and the money that is spent on them goes out of the community, creating in the end less local liquidity thus less local employment.
The increasing number of empty storefronts is an additional side effect of the self-evident evidence I gave above, but also a result of landlord greed coupled with the bad economy. In IV, why is the IV Surf Co. out of business? Certainly not for lack of clientele but because Chase Bank decided to move in and offered the landlord a better deal.
The arrogance, elitism, and fantasies of aristocracy of some people blinds them to many facts regarding homeless people, including the huge number of people who are homeless but actually have jobs. But facts mean nothing to some commentators, as is demonstrated. They may wish to scapegoat the already vulnerable and impoverished, but it is their intellectual dishonesty and lack of moral character that in the end hangs the hangmen in this debate.

sez_me, There's no elitism or "fantasies of aristocracy" going on here at all.

We tax-paying, job-holding, law-abiding citizens of Santa Barbara are sick and tired of the dirty bums on State Street. We are disgusted with the stench of urine and having to literally walk over and around these transients who lounge all day on the sidewalks.

Assign motive all you want, EZ but you are making "ass"umptions that are wrong and look foolish in the process by attacking other posters personally. Your moral character is being shown as frayed and torn by the way you are acting in this forum.

Go ahead and focus on the symptom instead of the cause of the decline of Sate St. The rest of us will just move on ahead. I hope you don't claim any kind of spirituality. Your own words to more to undermine you than my observations.

Lots of haters here, as usual. "I got mine and eff you". Very predictable.

Hating homeless and poor people makes as much sense as hating the miner's canary for having the temerity to die in the presence of insufficient oxygen.

However, one would have difficulty accusing the enlightened people of Santa Babylon of ever being sensible...

Much of the affordable housing has been razed and replaced with condos, commercial property, and high-end hotels. Those people have to go somewhere, and while some people think they should just disappear, that is an unrealistic viewpoint.

Others have simply been priced out of the housing they already had, as block after block is gentrified to serve the demands of tourists and yuppies. These people also have to go somewhere, and no, they aren't going to disappear or have the good grace to just crawl off and die somewhere, preferably with a permit and out of sight of the tourists.

SB is a city. Cities contain people, and they don't all look like you, or me, or someone else we think all people should look and live like. This means that like it or not, we are going to have to look at and coexist with people who are different from us in some fashion.

That's tough for some people to handle, but it is an inescapable fact. Unless a law is passed allowing society to round up and ship off all its poor and homeless to special camps with razor wire and armed guards somewhere out of sight of the resentful, angry folks whose rage-filled rants fill the blogosphere and these forums, they're going to continue existing in plain sight. Like it or not, the good people of SB will have to look at the poor/homeless/unwanted among us, unless they can pass a law like that. It's not impossible. It's been done before. The question remains however, have we learned anything from those grim periods in human history? Or are we doomed to repeat them?

The current model of hatred, resentment, legislation, criminalization, warehousing, unending poverty, lack of the most basic of life's necessities, vilification, violence, bigotry, endless welfare, warehousing, and lucrative womb-to-tomb careers for "providers" with vested interests in keeping "clients" dependent on their systems/programs/shelters is simply not working.

We have to look logically at this situation, and realize that this is a simple matter of dollars and cents. People have been priced out of their homes, entire neighborhoods are gentrified right out of reach, workers are sentenced to a lifetime of endless renting with no hope of ever owning even the most modest of homes.

There are plenty of jobs, but they are subsistence, low-wage service jobs with no hope of advancement, future, health insurance or retirement options. These are facts. As long as these are the facts and there is zero chance of these things changing, and for people to have a shot at a piece of the pie or at least some stability in their lives, this situation WILL get worse.

So hate on. Keep whinging away, stamping the feet in a petulant snit, and parroting the "move along" mantra. It's working SOOO well...just as well as the eternal dependence on social services has worked. As in..not at all.

Or, employ some grey matter and logic, and approach this as the socio-economic issue it is, and maybe achieve some real, lasting, and most of all humane solutions.

I know...that's way too much of a stretch...but I can dream, I suppose...

"The increasing number of empty storefronts is an additional side effect of the self-evident evidence I gave above, but also a result of landlord greed coupled with the bad economy." -EZK-

Amen. I was speaking to the husband (and a former co-worker of mine) who told me how the landlord increased the rent on his wife's art gallery from $5000 per month to $10,000 per month and priced her out. As of last December, the landlord was still unable to find a replacment renter and had already lowered the rent down to $7500.

Isn't it funny how people miss the point: The prices around here are ridiculous yet they wonder why there are homeless people.

Yes...State Street is rapidly becoming a boarded-up ghetto of abandoned dreams.There was a wonderful restaurant I used to go to which saw their rent soar from 5000 to 20000 and were forced right out of business. They had been there at least 16 years that I know of and were a thriving business, but who can possibly survive in that kind of atmosphere?

Bars of course, seem to do just fine, because there is an endless supply of drunks streaming downtown from UCSB, City College, and from out of town. But regular businesses that serve the residents are being shut down one by one as their proprietors are crushed under the weight of landlord greed. Even Borders finally threw up its hands in disgust and vacated its longtime location. That corner is now an eyesore.

It's just too simplistic to blame homeless people for the mess this city is in, but that is what we have been doing for years so it's a habit now. Meanwhile, nobody can afford to do business down there and the vacancies increase every month...

Holly, your summation of the problem is that anyone who dares to comment on the problem of the bums on State Street is a "hater." That is a naive and uninformed position.

If you think that "hate" for individuals is what is driving people to complain about the transients and bums on State Street than you are entirely out of touch with economic and social reality. No one "hates" the homeless nor is anyones concern over the situation motivated by "hate."

This is about public health and public safety.

You and EZK love to personally attack posters' opinions labeling other posters as lacking in compassion simply because they have their eyes open and object to the stench of bums and the harassment of hands literally waved in my face asking for change every time we walk State.

Is that the only debate and argument of which you are capable? If so, have at it and realize that you have not added anything worthwhile to the discussion other than to accuse others of being "haters."

And by contrast, after you're done chiding people you don't even know for being "haters" are we supposed to come away with the impression that you are all saintly compassion, (24 / 7 flowers and unicorns for all transients everywhere) and helping the homeless or contributing to society in some meaningful way?

Existing immigration laws are not enforced for the same reason that anti-trust, corporate taxes and environmental regulations are not enforced. Corporate America increases profit with lower overhead.

'Corporate America increases profit with lower overhead.' Which is also why we lack public health and safety. Go on, keep lowering taxes on the wealthy and coporate. See that they don't care. Then blame those who get screwed and pee on the railroad tracks. Disgusting is : Staples Center, the FedEx Orange Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the 'real' housewives (not even married or cleaning house). Righteous fantasy: Citi Bank towers for the homeless, Bank of America innercity garden food bank, Halliburton Death Valley Solar Farm. We don't wanna house or feed the homeless, yet we have a coprorate welfare country claiming christian values (ha!).