Santa Monica, Calif., extends hand to its homeless

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Two Santa Monica police officers approached a woman as she knelt under a bush near City Hall, "looking for my dead son."

Within minutes, Officers Jacob Holloway and Dan Smith had learned her name and age (Gloria Breslin, 55) and phoned her 17-year-old son (alive and well in Venice), who said his mother was a longtime methamphetamine addict. Holloway loaded her and her dog into the back of a squad car and drove her to a nearby social-services agency, where she had a caseworker.

Known for decades as "home of the homeless" for its treatment of transients, liberal-leaning Santa Monica has embraced a multipronged approach to getting people off the streets that is yielding results.

Borrowing successful practices from New York, San Francisco and Denver, police and service providers in Santa Monica collaborate closely to ensure that individuals most at risk find transitional housing and treatment.

A recent city report shows an 8 percent reduction in Santa Monica's street population from 2007, to 915. City officials acknowledged the number is unacceptable but said the decline indicates the new philosophy is working.

Holloway and Smith are two of six officers in the city's "homeless liaison program" who look for the homeless and encourage them to seek services and housing. On any given day, they might cart a diabetic man with ulcerated sores to the hospital or help a homeless teenager find a place to stay.

The program expects to add a seventh officer soon and a county mental-health worker, said Sgt. Joaquin Vega, supervisor of the program. The officers have become such fixtures that street denizens often ask them for help.

Housing-first model

Vega said the strategy is a departure from years past, when police would arrest or hospitalize the inebriated, drug-addled or mentally ill homeless, only to release them in a few hours or days. Well-intentioned groups offered outdoor meals, and some agencies encouraged individuals to drop in to take showers. Upset residents and business owners contended Santa Monica was putting out a welcome mat.

City officials realized the old way made it easy for homeless people to perpetuate their lifestyle. New York and San Francisco by then were having luck with a housing-first model. The aim was to get the homeless out of the elements and then provide counseling and care.

Santa Monica's streets — with some exceptions — are starting to seem different.

"What I hear people saying is they feel like we still have a lot of work to do, but things are getting better," said John Maceri, executive director of Ocean Park Community Center (OPCC), an organization that provides homeless services and housing.

One January night, 260 volunteers walked every street and alley in Santa Monica, counting homeless people. The 8 percent reduction was good news.

Space is scarce

"The census is one way we can track that our efforts are bearing fruit, that our people are moving from the streets into housing," said Danielle Noble, Santa Monica's senior administrative analyst for homeless services.

Like many other cities, Santa Monica wrestles with a woeful lack of low-income housing. Other communities have criticized its failure to house the chronically homeless, many of whom end up in transitional housing elsewhere. Santa Monica is creating more units for homeless people, but the space tends to come in small doses.

Such is the case with a city-owned building near the boardwalk that houses Daybreak Day Center for mentally ill homeless women.

The building has seven occupied rent-controlled units, and the City Council recently authorized funds to study refurbishing seven other uninhabitable units in the building.

City commitment

In an editorial, the local Santa Monica Daily Press derided the plan as fiscally imprudent. It said the city should sell the property when the market rebounds and use the proceeds to partner with the county and another neighboring city, if necessary, to build a bigger facility with more beds.

The city concluded a sale was not feasible because of the cost and time it would take to relocate Daybreak and the existing tenants.

Santa Monica's new vision is sparking hope about what once seemed intractable.

"We really are doing a disservice to homeless individuals and to society if we're simply sustaining homeless populations on the street," said Councilman Richard Bloom.