This should be a very good tourist season in Santa Barbara. Foreign tourists will descend on the city with stacks of cheap dollars to spend. Maybe the kinder ones will give some away to the many homeless and mentally ill people they’ll encounter on our streets. That’ll be a kindness given the increasing lack of community support.

The generosity of the environment and the tourist industry that benefits from it is not reflected in policies toward the city and county’s most vulnerable citizens. The deinstitutionalization of the 1980s under Reagan, which resulted in the proliferation of community based organizations to provide housing and care, is morphing into the destruction of this very network for the very same alleged reason - no money. No money?

This is hard to swallow in this town. There seems to be piles of money for everything that will add more magnetism to the magnet. Multi-story buildings are going up everywhere. Mixed use projects are taking off. New hotels are in the offing. Restaurants, fancy spas, and boutiques proliferate. The Granada Theater hasn’t looked as fine since 1905.

But our guests may wonder what’s wrong with this picture. When they witness a psychotic episode in front of Paseo Nuevo, or a homeless drunk passed out in front of the Museum of Art, they may begin to suspect there is a safety net missing under the Jacarandas. In a beautiful city like ours, that’s an ugly reality.

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