An alphabetical list* of agencies and services who serve the homeless population in Santa Barbara, California.
- Aegis
- American Indian Health and Services
- CALM
- Casa Esperanza Homeless
- Center Catholic Charities – Carpinteria
- Catholic Charities – S.B.
- Central Coast Rescue Mission
- Community Action Commission
- Community Kitchen
- Coordinating Committee for the Homeless
- Cottage Health System / Parish Nursing Program – S.B.
- Cottage Hospital Social Services – Discharge Planning
- Cottage Residential Center
- Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse / Project Recovery
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Vet Center
- Doctors Without Walls
- Domestic Violence Solutions
- Drop-in Center/Referral Information
- Families ACT
- Family Service Agency
- Food Bank – South County
- Guydance House
- Health Care for the Homeless
- Hospitality HouseHousing Authority of the City of S.B.
- Independent Living Resource Center – S.B.
- Legal Aid Foundation of S.B. County – S.B.
- Lighthouse of Santa Barbara
- Mental Health Association in S.B. County
- Narcotics Anonymous – Santa Barbara
- New Beginnings Counseling Center
- Noahs Anchorage Youth Crisis Shelter
- PathPoint
- Peoples Self-Help Housing Corp.
- Rape Crisis Center
- Recovery Road
- Rental Housing Mediation Task Force
- S.B. Community Housing Corp.
- S.B. County Dept. of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) – Alcohol and Drug
- S.B. County Dept. of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) – Mental Health
- S.B. County Dept. of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) CARES Unit – South
- S.B. County Dept. of Public Health – Health Care for the Homeless
- S.B. County Dept. of Social Services
- S.B. County Education Office Homeless Education Liaison Project (HE/LP) <
- Salvation Army – Carpinteria
- Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers of Santa Barbara
- Santa Barbara Rescue Mission
- Sarah House
- St. Vincents-Affordable Housing Program
- St. Vincents-PATHS Program
- Stalwart Clean and Sober
- The Phoenix of Santa Barbara
- The Salvation Army – S.B.
- Transition House
- UCSB Street Health Outreach
- Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara
- Villa Majella
- Willbridge, Inc.
- Zona Seca – Santa Barbara
*This is likely an incomplete list. Many listed may focus only a portion of their efforts towards homeless services. This is an unscientific compilation.
WOW!!!!!!!
Wow is right. What if this kind of attention was focused on our kids and schools instead of 40 year old white men with substance problems.
Bravo!!!!!! Please spread this list around. Make it go viral and get into the hands of every single media outlet and elected official. Thank you very much for yet again taking on the issues no other media or new media has undertaken. And make that Brava to Cherie Rae and her bold crew for sun-shining the dark secrets of Homeless Inc. in our town. Now just add up the Executive Director salaries and administrative costs of all of these organizations and you have another block-buster news story.
Plenty of vagrants in San Roque now because of BevMo! and the proliferation of pot shops. RVs line Mackensie Park, permanent grifters in Loreto Plaza and now on San Roque street corners. Churches in the Upper East moved vagrants into this area and Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens and Alameda Park are loaded with them. So far only the Riviera has escaped their invasion which is surprising due to the nice views sunshine and public bathrooms at Franceschi Park. Great also for daytime RV parking before returning to city parking lots at night made available by Homeless Inc to support permanent dependency in our city.
Love ur sarcasm
There’s always someone sleeping in the Mission ruin grounds and Mission park, so I’d say the Riviera is not completely spared.
The Mission was in the Upper East. Add those bums to their fair share. Riviera, you still need to do better. You can’t poach Upper East Mission bums and claim you are done with your share. Mesa, where is your quota of bums? Please ask for RVs to park along the scenic views on Shoreline Drive. Free bathrooms and running water all day at the Riviera’s Franceschi Park, how can you miss this opportunity?
I’d say “dedicated” is a stretch. Most, if not all of those charities serve many different groups, including the homeless. I’m all for charities doing all they can to detox and clean up these bums (just not with my tax money), but the ultimate blame lies in our weak willed leaders and their inability to take an “intolerant” stand against anything. We are not San Francisco and should not tolerate these bums staking out our public areas as if they were their own.
Agree, it’s been updated. This is a fluid and unscientific list, so if there are agencies that don’t belong, or some that do, please point them out in the comments and the post will be updated.
Hay way not include City Parks and Recreation Department on the list of agencies that provide services to the homeless, that is where bulk of the homeless wind up spending their nights. Also many homeless people in Santa Barbabra scavenge for food out of garbage cans so why not include Marlborough wast management systems as an agency that provides services to the homeless and hungry of or community?
Anonymous seams to be confusing drunken bums with the homeless. First of all most people that become homeless also become invisible. Not only to the general public but even to each other. That is because homeless people do not look or act any differently than they did before they become homeless. At the same time there are plenty of alcoholics and drug abusers living in our mits that by their nature have no respect or consideration for others. Those are the the area residences that are making a nuisance of them selves by bumming and scaring off area costumers that are causing all the problems for Society. In order to correct that problem, the drunken bum problem, must first be identified for what it is, a drunken bum problem and addressed as such.
Santa Barbara can turn a deaf ear to anyone who says we are not doing enough to provide a social safety net in this town. Missing are the vagrants who are clearly not doing enough themselves to get up and on with their lives. Use this list every time you see a hand out on State Street or some bleeding heart tries to play the guilt card. Thank you for publicizing this list. Print it out and hand it to the next beggar that gets in your face.
Add all the churches who provide additional cold weather shelter during the winter months – there is some special name to their program. Westmont students ran some sort of feeding program in the parks. That adds several more to this growing list of public services already available that is in fact making this problem worse.
1. Survivalsantabarbara. org
2. Unitarian Society Warming Centers
Constantly getting dunned for homeless fundraisers and then always being told we are not doing enough has made me tired. Thank you for posting this list. Now I am suspicious. Where has all that money donated with good intentions actually gone? How can we get a breakdown.
If you build it they will come
When the Milpas Community Association held their news conference to talk about what they learned from their Santa Monica homeless tour, some made much of the $$ spent there compared to what was spent here, throwing up their hands, implying “See-there you go-game over.” I said that SB money could be better spent. The point I was trying to make was that Santa Barbara $ is “stove-piped”, each agency with their own administrative costs, outreach workers, etc and better coordination could result in a more effective approach. I’m not alone. Sitting around a conference room table for meetings is not enough. I had a very animated conversation in Whole Foods with someone who is very progressive who agreed with me. Throwing $ at the problem is not working and the folks who do good work are being smeared with the same brush as those who are not effective. If city leaders can’t bring about the necessary change, eventually the people who support the programs (donors) will.
I can SOLVE the homeless,panhandle AND gang issues very easily,very cheaply & very quickly.
And if I can think of solutions with my limited education,then so can CCouncil.
It seems as if the issue is INTENTIONAL, or else why would it still be here?
All I need is for the Mayor to hear me out…but that will never happen
Agree with those early posters. How about some support for our local kids – and not just those at risk? Downstairs central library “children’s center” remains unfunded. Schools tanking. Class sizes growing unmanagable at > 25 kindergarteners with no aide. Teachers begging for pencil sharpeners.
I think there is plenty of support for homeless and affordable housing. I would love to see someone report on whether admin costs for these programs are out of line.
I would love to see the direct benefit expenditures per recipient compared to amount of money spent on all these programs. BTW: Teachers making $60-85,000 for a 185 day year can afford to bring their own pencil sharpeners. It is not a matter of wealth distribution here. Eg. Money for white male substance abusing vagrants should be spent on teacher union insatiable demands instead. It is a matter of stopping the wealth confiscation in the first place. You earn it, you get to keep it. You don’t earn it, you get some charitable left-overs and you say thank you rather than “I want more!”.
The City Housing Authority is one of the biggest players in Homeless, Inc. Include Common Ground and Bring Our Community Home, which are oversight players, made up mostly of homeless advocates. The city spends $3.1 million on homeless, the County claims to spend $36m. Add in the private foundations, and you’re looking at a huge amount of money. The key question is this: what has all this effort, all this money, and all these groups done to REDUCE the numbers of homeless on our streets annually? Why isn’t that their overarching goal?
ITS about Money and studys so we can get more money. loitering is a ticket, dont show up for court and go to jail. thats really how santa monica handles it. been there, done it! we soon go away to a place with more tolerance. why would a bum choose to stay where I would continually be held accountable For my unacceptable lifestyle. HELLO? hand outs only attract. As soon as the deterrents are more drastic then the payoff they will be gone. Please. Wordy dribbles that sound good dont work.
If you want the term “Homeless Inc.” to be meaningful, you should limit the agencies/groups included within it to those whose primary mission is to provide services to the homeless. So Casa Esperanza, which exists solely for that purpose, would be included, while “Cottage Hospital” which sometimes provides services to the homeless, as a tiny fraction of its overall services, probably should not be included. Even if this list is limited to the bona-fide homeless service providers, the dollar figures are still staggering. My point is this: when you are trying to define a concept, and you have plenty of unassailable examples to include withint it, don’t dilute it by including marginal examples that others can use to challenge and dismiss your concept.
Now I know why government and agencies don’t want to address the problems. Were talking about a multimillion dollar cottage industry that probably employs thousands and funds the politicians. An eye opener thank you!
Anon: There are issues with teacher unions such as tenure and pension structure, sure. However, great teachers add tremendous value to society and very arguably are not overpaid, particuarly in this community with the expensive cost of living. Most often do much out of pocket for their classrooms. Not all public employees have the same value to us and I would argue that cops, fire, teachers, etc. is not the place to start cutting.
The real issue at hand is priorities and wasteful spending. There is plenty of $ here without new taxes, but where is it going? Since even the conservative council arm has barely begun to dig in, news and blog outlets like this one will hopefully prove to be an important tool. Even Schnieder responds and backtracks if the controversy gets big enough.
This full listing for Homeless Inc is entirely proper and the numbers of agencies will grow as more and more learn about this remarkable list. This is the collection of free services at any level available for primarily white, male substance abusers in our community. Typical of a Homeless Inc advocate to sanitize and redefine the issues so they can keep looking poor and helpless and in constant need of more funding. Expose this racket and let’s see how much of this vast amount of money and resources go to audited, direct and productive help and not for administrative overhead and enabling projects of no demonstrable impact. Watch out for all the typical buzz words used to justify s these programs. Demand actual audited sustained success case histories identifying a specific, named individual who got moved off the street and into a productive new setting. Not just a revolving door; not just a temporary accommodation to keep someone living on the streets permanently like the Big Blue Bus. But real effect for this huge amount of money that flows through Homeless Inc every year. Until all these groups independently prove they are not adding to the vagrant problems in this town, stop funding them.
17% of all city housing is now government controlled mainly for low income and at risk population. They should have stopped at 10%. But all you hear are demands for more. When does the city stop providing subsidized housing? 25%? 50%, 100%? Seventeen percent of out housing permanently taken out of the local market and reserved for special population groups is precipitously dangerous. One reason they cannot unload the bankrupt Chapala One project is because it is riddled with government low-cost inclusionary housing that has to remain so in perpetuity. No one wants to touch that with a 10 foot pole so we now have a permanently empty monument at the end of Chapala to remind us always of the misguided demands of our past city councils who thought they were the smartest people in the room. Salvation Army does a good job with rehab. Maybe they can expand their programs into the vacant Chapala One by using all these millions of wasted dollars on the rest of Homeless Inc. Dedicate that $30 million plus a year to purchasing Chapala One and then tell vagrants once it is full, that is all we can offer you.
Advocate, I agree with you. The way we measure progress with homeless assistance produces no endgame. Measuring ‘number housed’ sounds great until you dig in and find out that half those we housed are from out-of-state. Is this success? No, people thought housing was going to Santa Barbara-based homeless individuals, that we would be taking care of our own community. We’re clearly not doing that. Measuring ‘number housed’ always leads to the next step, which is pleas for more housing. There’s no endgame, because no matter how much housing you build, you’ll always need more for the new arrivals. You’re right, we must get realistic, well-defined measures of success, and start holding agencies that get government funding accountable to those measures. You don’t hit the bar, you don’t get funded. The current model is to spread the $ around, hoping someone out there will hit on a magic formula and get some success. It’s not working. It hasn’t worked. So let’s stop throwing MORE $ at it, and instead start directing resources to the agencies that produce results. Let’s also stop trying to help EVERYONE, and stop making it so comfortable to be here. Santa Maria has more people than we do, and 1/5 of the homeless we do. Start asking why.
Santa Maria has fewer homeless people because no one went out to count them. They also sleep five to a garage and totally evade anyone with a clipboard.
Santa Maria does’t have tourists giving cash to their beggers.
Exactly. And Rather than spending $160,000/year/policeman, it would be cheaper and probably effective to put up signage, unattractive-looking though that might be to the Sign Committee, and having flyers available at various shops as well as the Welcome Center urging no handouts, please.
It’s the same old supply – demand: supply handouts and you will get asked.
Yes, the list needs to be tweaked. It’s not right attaching the Rape Crisis Center and Sarah House to Homeless, Inc. – Salvation Army in Carp. no longer exists. etc. However, kudos to The View for exposing this. Keep it up!!!
Fortunately, SOME of the leaders of Homeless Inc. are starting to get it and see that the “housing only” method isn’t working. The concept of most of the money going to providers rather than solving a problem is finally being exposed. The community is finally hearing and seeing this. We need to help the people who actually need help, and the way it’s being done now ain’t working!
If the providers actually wanted to help people, rather than line their pockets, they would listen to the other communities that are actually fixing the problem and make real change, not “lost change”.
Check out the police blotter and probably 50% of the calls are vagrant related. Add the expensive police time, booking costs, and court costs time to Homeless Inc’s drain on our community. This is one big financial rat hole for such a narrow group of misfits who brag about coming to Santa Barbara for its good vibes and easy life. How did this happen? There are names and faces to those who chronically made these bad decisions. Top of the heap of course are the past city council members. But those who came to them with this lying dog and pony show need to be exposed. The cheerleaders in the crowds who kept repeating we are not doing enough also need to be exposed so we never fall for this self-serving scam again. Even the Visitors Bureau needs exposing for turning the city over to the Mitch Snyder crowd in the Fig Tree March days. This is when this city took the wrong turn.
The individual who submitted this to SB View did a remarkable disservice to the people of Santa Barbara. This is beyond misleading and is seriously constititutes malfeasance. If homelessness disappeared tomorrow, only seven of these charities would be out of business. And every single employee would be jumping for joy having worked themselves out of a job. To suggest that CALM, Phoenix, CAC, DVS, Sanctuary, ADMHS, Zona Seca and on and on – are designed to serve the homeless is beyond ludicrous. Shame on you. And, Pedro, you know nothing about the outcomes and results of the charities you smear by insinutaion. You want revennge on Salud, Das and Helene so badly that you are willing to stab your long-term supporters in the back like this? Shame on you, too. When this type of shrill attack comes, you know who is losing the argument. Hello pendulaum swing.
Unbelievable, you miss the point of this list entirely. This is a list of services that support this homeless population and serves as a class one antidote for those who claim we are “not doing enough”. This was an extremely important collection of services to list all in one place. May we go forward now? No one wants these people on the streets and no one wants this town to be a magnet that keeps attracting more homeless vagrants to come here. But most of all, no one wants to ever hear anyone saying we ‘are not doing enough”. Our problem it turns out, is we are doing too much. Thanks to all for the candor of their replies. Pedro Nava is savvy about local politics. He knows of what he speaks and he maligned no one.
People are still missing the point. These are agencies in this area that serve the homeless, whether it is their primary service area or not. No one can claim we “are not doing enough” for this population sub-set when you have over 50 agencies available. What these groups are not doing with these many disjointed services is doing anything productive or efficient for amount of money spent on this population subgroup. This sub-group is clever. They have websites and they know about you. Your problem is you don’t yet understand how all these major or minor services inadvertently or not add to the vagrant problem and you do nothing to prevent or solve it. Get your collective acts together because if you are only a minor player perpetuating this mess, you are acting irresponsibly. There is mass donor fatigue and if you are not part of the solution at any level, you are a major part of the problem. Stop enabling vagrants in this community.
Marcy, I don’t know who you are or what agency you defend but you vividly illustrate the stove-pipe, head in the sand attitude that makes the vagrant problem worse in our community. This brick-wall attitude of individual enabling organizations show why collectively this town has become such a mess. I hope boards of directors take note and thank you again Santabarbaraview for clearly setting out why we keep having a vagrant problem in this town and other towns do not. These few non-profits who demand to feel good for themselves at the expense of local businesses and residents illustrates exactly what is wrong.
To anonymous who calls the homeless vagrant which means a nuisance. Homeless are not a nuisance they are human beings who need help. Why is it awful if they live here or in Los angeles or wherever the point is they need help. I think you don’t see that the funds do help some but not enough. Whether there will ever be a cure for not having homeless I honestly don’t know but we are people here to help one another. If you don’t want to donate or help you have that right and sadly so. But don’t bad mouth agencies who are trying. If they were raising enough there would be less of an issue. This is earth a place for one and all. The beaches the trees, the ocean the air we breath it’s for everyone. Let the homeless be where they need. Putting them away or somewhere else or letting another city deal with it doesn’t cure the problem. Let them be seen let them be known for they are people just like you and I who feel, bleed, sleep laugh and cry. Call me whatever you wish but all I see is someone who doesn’t want to “see” homeless in Santa barbara and make these people go away. Well guess what they’re not and I will continue as I hope most others will continue and try and help in whatever capacity that I can. And if that means someone with a mental illness doesn’t understand the capacity to help themselves but can still have a meal as they still have the will to live then so be it. Know that some of these people at one time served our country were significant members of society. Something tragic happened to many or some were born poor. They are all human.
Marcy, your argument is fine, except that we are all being forced to donate to these redundant and unsupervised agencies via our tax dollars. Obviously the “tolerant” view is not working as the numbers of aggressive homeless are increasing every day so we would like to see some consolidation of agencies, reduction in wasted taxpayer dollars and extraction of our government from the housing and homeless “business”.
Hi smurt most of our tax dollars are not going to these agencies. Most are run on grants and donations and we cant just ignore them. I don’t think people realize how many homeless are also actually family and children. Most of our tax dollars are going to war. That is all. Thanks
This list is so helpful. We obviously should purge Cottage Hospital and the US Department of Veterans Affairs from our community. They are the problem of course.
To whomever who wrote this article all I can say is this person did a lot of research for an article but has very little knowledge of what’s actually happening at these organizations. I work in the medical community and have first on experience into knowing who uses these agencies, I’ve volunteered at soup kitchens. Please every one of you who has contributed your opinions here. Volunteer yourself for a soup kitchen and watch who is coming in to eat these meals. They are not mostly drug addicts that this article states. Please volunteer and see for yourself who these agencies serve and why these people need our help and remember many of the agencies listed are not functioning to service the homeless. Some mentioned are but most are not. Go to the soup kitchens and please see for yourself who the homeless/hungry are and what they really need. Volunteer for a medical facility listen to these people’s stories and see who they are and why they are where they are. I think you will be surprised.
Those defending the misguided non-profit agenda make my case better than I could. Keep it up and watch even more donations dry up. What you are doing is not working and we are no longer going to donate to support this. Just like the taxpayer revolt going on, what non-profits are defending here will make them the next victim of charitable donation revolt. Results please for our dollars please; not whining defenses for the failed status quo. Stand back a bit from this issue and listen to the wider community because these are the people you want to keep supporting your own jobs to do work that is valued. There is no community value to your task today and there is no reason to continue supporting your groups. Who among your disparate groups has the leadership moxie to take this necessary coordination role on? That is all we are asking. You have to budge out of your failed status quo if you want to succeed. Stop listening to Montecito donors who only want you to keep these problems out of their neighborhoods, okay?
Survey found almost 50% were drug addicts and 50% were alcohol abusers. Even accounting for double additions, your main profile of this population are self-abusers. First step is stop enabling them to stay on the streets and feed their addictions. Go to Al-Anon and learn why your continued non-profit enabling is preventing any solutions for the problems you claim you are trying to help. You are not and you will learn why, in 12 easy steps.
Non-profits allow too many vagrants to come here and game the system. That is why non-profits are losing support. When helping one person in need allows 10 grifters to also abuse the system is material error. Clean up this material error because the only vote we have is to stop giving.
Next list needs to be how many housing projects Santa Barbara has already built for the homeless, like the one on the creek on Bath Street, and the mess recently exposed on Garden Street. And how many more have to be built thanks to the ACLU lawsuit…Then what kinds of strings were pulled, and rules are ignored, in order to get the projects built, and the often-heard cry, “We’ll lose our funding if this doesn’t get approval today.” Just watch the line up of non-profit leaders who troop forward to testify on behalf on one another. It used to be all about workforce housing, now it’s all about housing the homeless. And while we decent citizens want to help, maybe, just maybe, SB has already done its fair share–and the taxpayers are running out of $$, tolerance and patience for this problem that just keeps getting bigger and worse.
Some these housing projects are required by HUD grants, …… that fund more Homeless Inc programs and executive director salaries. It is a vicious circle. The only review of the HUD programs is having these very same grant funded people come to city council and them them how wonderful their programs are and keep the money coming. HUD grants have strangled our local city planning process because they demand we care for more and more vagrants and build more and more housing. Investigate the whole city acceptance of HUD grant process and see how this is one more link in this degrading mess and why we feel so helpless watching this happen. Follow the money, they always say. Watch these programs defend their works in the more ineffectual terms. And watch too past city councils all patting each other on the backs telling them how wonderful they all are. Yet no a single one ever asked or submitted any factual support or evidence of success for continued HUD grant funding. We gave away this city in small steps and we now have to take it back in small steps. Curtailing HUD grants is a good place to start because there is no net benefit to our city.
If only the list actually provided services to the homeless. There would not be any homeless in Santa Barbara County. The problem is that most of the agencies listed do not provide direct services to the homeless. Instead they provide services to the agencies that say they provide services to the homeless. try visiting some of websites. Even the ones that do provide direct services do not want the homeless to know of their existence, fact most do not even have a contact phone mumbler and if you tried calling their business number trying to find services for a homeless person you will be given the run around. with not services forth coming. Some on the list may actually provide some service to some homeless people but they are so selective whom they serve that most homeless people can not get any services at all. For anyone who thinks that there are an overabundance of agencies that serve the homeless I suggest that you try contact some of the agencies on the list and ask if they can provide services to a particulate populations! you will find that few actually provide services to any more that a small number of the homeless population, some only provide services to married couples but there is always a long whiting period so some other agencies must fill in the gap. Others only shelter families with children again only for a limited few homeless families. others only for the mental Ill homeless men some only to single women those are decided up between the diffident populations of sing women, Alcoholic only, drug users only, gay or lisbon only, each of those agencies only take a few women. other agencies on the list provide services to all low income people regardless of oh housing states. Hay way not include City Parks and Recreation Department on the list of agencies that provide services to the homeless, that is where the of the homeless wind up spending their nights. And many homeless people do not Santa Barbabra eat out of garbage cans so why not include Marlborough wast management systems as an agency that provides services to the homeless and hungry of or community.
If all this money goes to help the homeless but they admit upfront these people can’t be helped, then stop taking other people’s money pretending you are doing something. No matter what we do, you say they will still come. Then there is no need to do anything. They are going to drink themselves to death whether we spend all this money or not. They are going to refuse rehab whether we do anything or not. Those that can be saved can already save themselves. So let’s fold up this tent and send all these people sucking off the non-profit trough packing because they failed. Games over.
How again do we “send them packing” to go away?
What is the send method here that is still legal?
If you stop feeding the strays, they eventually move on to easier pickings. I hear San Francisco still has a few empty patches of sidewalk.
Survey found a very high percentage is mentally ill or severely mentally ill. You take these millions of wasted service dollars enabling them to keep living on the streets and re-open state hospitals and care facilities and substance abuse treatment centers. Those are the only choices for those who come to this town and can not function on their own. The rest of the grifters where poor life decisions are still a matter of choice do not get any public or non-profit support and plenty of attention from law enforcement. BTW, if you have a license to drive an RV on public streets this is a chosen vagrant lifestyle and there is no reason to support this RV population at all. All they have to do is turn the key on and move it on out.
Most Santa Barbarans spend their time running around trying to earn money to support their lifestyle. They have totally rejected the God who created this beautiful world. They have no time for their Creator. They are actually just as evil as the ‘homeless’ they so despise. Before criticizing others, take a good hard look at yourself. In the end you may be spending eternity with these people who you deem as so horrible.
Jesus was homeless. “What you do to the least of us, you do to me”. 70% of the people in Santa Barbara are Christians.
Wow seriously 70%? They sure don’t act like it.
“Reap what you sow” is good old time religion I can believe in. Or was that, “build it and they will come”. Take away initiative and you have condemned the man to a life of impoverishment. Give them a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.
Shame on the Political “lEaders” that allow thIs blot on SB!
Please add Thresholds to Recovery, Inc.
State Street is booming with panhandlers this week. I ususally laugh when people complain; and say get over it.. its not that bad.. But Holy Sh*t its bad right now. I was asked 8 to nine times for money while walking down State. Every 50 feet is some hobo, stoned kid, flute player, homeless con leashed pet, kids claiming they need money to get back to Lompoc, the list goes on! Somebody take a video, upload to youtube, and share with the new City Council in the need year!!
Oh… and Merry Christmas?
The video is a good idea. Maybe we could set up a fake Santa Barbara tourism site featuring videos like that and see if that gets the City Council off their butts.