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Yahoo!I was born here in Cottage Hospital in the sixties. I've lived in a VW bus, different boats in the harbor, beautiful homes in Mission Canyon, as well as the San Roque area, and later in apartments near City College and the Mesa, as well as many different large apartments on De La Vina back in the early nineties, when rents were incredibly low.
Now when I go down State Street it is impossible not to notice a very disturbing trend. The out of towner homeless person has decided to mass emigrate to Santa Barbara. Yeah weather's nice. But these new groups of acid heads gone wrong are starting to clog up the sidewalks with their mid-afternoon 'salute the spirit in the sky' antics. It is time we implement a "native homeless" card to our local crazies and force the rest out on midnight freight trains towards Santa Cruz or even Oregon.
How long can we let them bully their way into our home town and "just hang" while the rest of us work for a living? I am tired of our passive complacency. Santa Barbara and Montecito have to make street life less appealing to these foreign foot soldiers.
For now on, instead of handing them money, let's hand them the classified ad section from the newspaper. And let's do our part by voting on Proposition 187.1: Send all nonnative homeless people in Santa Barbara to Cuba effective immediately.
On a less comedic note, the most obvious answer is "fun work inclusion", where we recruit the homeless to do what? Exactly. There is no obvious answer, unless you're thinking like Walt Disney. So what does my complaint mean? Are we to suppose that by allowing these people from all parts of the nation to have free range over Santa Barbara we will be somehow 'blessed' in the future for our wide and caring hearts? Is not the real problem a lack of leadership and protectionism that should have kept the local police diligent instead of tolerating?
I'm an artist and musician from old Santa Barbara families. And my parents were the hippie King and Queen of the late sixties in Mountain Drive. Good thing I decided to think for my own at a very early age. —Ian Easton Renga
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You share the same frustrations of a lot of people regarding these unbounded travellers. Not only in SantaBarbara these homeless people frequents, they are all over the place.
But what is the answer for the mass emigration of these homeless people? Your local government should be concerned and addressing the issue. Ultimately, the Bush administration should have definitive steps to stop the influx of immigration.
Majority of these homeless people are capable of holding a menial job. Menial jobs that illegal immigrants are occupying.
I guess you can build them a community so they will not be scattered around . . . "homeless nation" ~ now that will be a party, I might just go and join them. A reality TV show is a must for this.
galadrielofdmidwest (anonymous profile)
September 29, 2007 at 9:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I was also raised in Santa Barbara in the 60's and moved years ago, At times I head back to Santa Barabara and see all these Different trends, now they have the homeless standing on every block on State St which I have never seen before when I was younger and it makes Santa Barbara look like a homeless town for anyone. Surer we had the hobo's back when but they stayed away from town.
Clean up your act for those who run the city, clean up Santa Barbara...
chica9231 (anonymous profile)
September 30, 2007 at 11:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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