This column is a follow-up to one I wrote two weeks ago, where the responses made clear the issue is one that’s on the hearts and minds of many. Ideally I hope we ask more questions, get more information, and open the window wide to let in as much info as possible. With that…
Tuesday was a study in seemingly random events that provided some startling contrasts. At 10:00 AM was the monthly Milpas Action Task Force meeting. The MATF came out of a city council directive, issue in 2004, that the shelter, with city staff and an expanded neighborhood advisory council, create a comprehensive plan to address the problems in the area. At this session, we asked the police about early prison release, and jail overcrowding. They reported there is some effect from early releases on the South County area as parolees are released back to the area where they were arrested. We were also tasked with gathering data on panhandling in the Milpas area, to define the scope of the problem.
At 1:30 PM, I saw a Roger (Edhat) alert that Tri-County Produce had a shoplifting turned assault. John Dixon, the owner, had been at the MATF meeting. He had intercepted a group of three leaving the store: two were shoplifting, one using a brand new Tri-County Produce reusable bag. The male became aggressive when John tried to detain him. It took 4 male employees to subdue the assault. One of the Tri-County employees got a bloody nose, and John sustained some cuts. Customer witnesses phoned it in to SBPD. The female shoplifter was apprehended down at the beach. The third in the party, another female, told John they’d just had lunch at the shelter.
One hour later, the Board of Supervisors met on the fate of the Bridgehouse Shelter, recently shut down as a result of the Lompoc Housing Community Development Corporation’s bankruptcy. I watched some of the public comment portion online, prominent speakers advocating for the care of Lompoc’s homeless, now without shelter.
At the same time, Eastside resident Robin Unander wrote a powerful first-hand account of transients drinking on the sidewalk in front of her home, while her toddler watched through the window. It was published in Wednesday’s Daily Sound.
At 3:00 PM, I received an email from a community member about panhandlers at both ends of the Trader Joe’s lot on Milpas. The community member asked them a question: where are you from? San Francisco. They said they’d been here since Sunday, this was a great place to come, as they’d be fed by non-profits. When asked: so then why panhandle? Tourists, the locals are nice, and the cops don’t care.
Now, wherever your emotions went while reading this sequence of events in the course of one day… you’re right to feel those things. This particular issue sparks a lot of feelings that reflect the experience one has had on this subject, whatever that experience has been, and all experiences are equally valid.
Some of us have meaningfully participated in assisting homeless individuals. We might have served lunch to someone we know, who once had a business here, and now this feeding is their only route to get a good meal. One might have helped someone leave homelessness, and been powerfully affected by that experience. Those who volunteered for the count last year might have heard first-hand narratives of loss and addiction that touched them deeply.
There is nothing anyone can say that would negate those experiences, their power, and the feelings they created.
But the same is also equally true of people who have been assaulted, experienced theft or shoplifting, harassment, trespass, and defecation on their property. The businessman who runs a tacqueria with his daughters, assaulted behind his business at 5 AM when he accidentally disturbed a transient sleeping at his back door, is upset. Understandably. The manager at McDonald’s who was punched in the face by a transient who arrived recently from Santa Maria is also upset, understandably. John experienced an assault in apprehending a shoplifter. There are people who avoid some of the stores on Milpas, or State St altogether, because they don’t want to experience an intimidating scene.
None of these feelings are wrong. Whatever experience you’ve had is valid, because you’ve had it, and nothing anyone can say will undo it. Browbeating won’t make it un-happen, and neither will name-calling.
I put this forth today, after the randomness of the events of Tuesday, because it feels like when we talk about this issue, people divide into opposing poles, and refuse to consider any other way of looking at it.
(Anyone who follows issues will readily point out this happens on any number of fronts.)
But reality is not so black-and-white. Those that have helped people in dire need, and feel we should do so, are right. But so are those who’ve experienced a criminal element, the effects of fallout on their area, or who meet individuals who show us how we’re taken advantage of…their experiences and thoughts are no less valid.
What’s necessary is to hold the tension of those opposites, those different experiences, and the total reality they present. It’s not one or the other. It’s both / and. Until we learn to see the situation, in its entirety, we’ll never get to an objective viewpoint.
Without that, we’ll never be able to solve this problem.
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1. We are all homeless when we come to Santa Barbara. Some of us find ways to take care of our selves. Others demand others take care of them for the sheer fact they also decided to come here.
2. Re-open state care facilities for those who cannot take care of themselves. There is nothing compassionate enabling them to continue living on the streets.
3. Some form of incarceration is required for public drunkeness and drug abuse that threatens both persons and quiet enjoyment of ones property, private or business.
4. Develop constitutionally-sound vagrancy and public nuisance laws.
5. Fight ACLU rather than roll over like prior city councils
6. Celebrate loss of RDA funding that demanded we continually increase the city’s share of subsidized housing attracting more and more vagrants to some to this over-burdened town.
7. Keep up the public information campaign about misguided responses to pan-handling.
8. Pray SB does not permanently lose its appeal to tourists who bring in a large portion of city revenues.
9. Eschew tyranny by the minority.
10. There is nothing compassionate enabling poor life style choices and demanding everyone pay for these very same poor lifestyle choices.
11. Vagrants are not cute pets: they are pests.
Thank you for this. It does give a taste for those not living in the lower east of what it is like here. Curious sidenote: I just went to the Casa Esperanza site to find out who are the directors, few of whom probably live or even shop in this area, and saw that the Casa Esperanza sponsored the opening night party for the SBIFF: http://openingnight2012.eventbrite.com/ – and that it is featured still on its home page: http://casa-esperanza.org/cm/Home.html. Interestingly, though, they don’t list the directors.
These facilities, important as they are for those in need, need to be decentralized — or centralized away from businesses, such as Tri-County, there long before Casa Esperanza, and away from residences.
As one who walks in the area, I know well the panhandling and have noticed the increase recently, as well as the increase in the sounds of sirens.
My property tax goes up annually; the value of living in the lower east Santa Barbara diminishes regularly, thanks to the city’s welcoming handouts. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the police reports, how many calls, how many arrests, how many fire-ER visits per area of the city.
Crime statistics by locale are available from the SBPD – plus they now have beat officers who will coordinate this information. Support your local police efforts to clean up this mess instead of bashing them when they try to respond.
Crime in this town primarily is drugs, alcohol, vagrants and domestic violence. And it does concentrate in specific areas. Support your police efforts to deal with this cluster of crime. They know. They are the paid professionals.
The only thing missing in this town is full public support. And a city council who supports their efforts to staunch this corrosion to our city’s well-being. Don’t “feel sorry” for local businesses affected by this scourge. Go out of your way to keep shopping and patronize these businesses. Out-numbering those who want to destroy this town is far better than “feeling sorry” and watching good people get swept away by this concentration of blight.
I feel sorry for the Milpas businesses. Even the fast food restaurant in the Trader Joes lot needs a full time security guard.
The people needing hugs are the well-meaning local business owners having to face this mess every day in the Milpas area. Support Tri-Counties Produce! Stop pandering pan-handlers! Vote with your feet.
If Trader Joe customers demonstrate such false virtue that makes life miserable for everyone else around them, time to send a very different message. An empty parking lot at Trader Joe’s would be the best message of all to the bums who exploit its bleeding-heart customer base.
Hugs to John Dixon and his fine staff at Tri-Counties who have been on the vagrancy front-lines for decades now and have not given up in the face of continued battering by the misguided few.
As I`ve said before on SBview,Edhat,Noozhawk,Craigs-list…anywhere this subject has come up..& even at the Mayor`s counter at her office…
that I have drafted a plan that will:
Eliminate homelessness by 90%,provide jobs,bolster tourism 100%, & save city funds…
To date,this info [freely offered] has been rejected before even being read….so, the only conclusion can be that the Mayor & C-council have an agenda to KEEP homelessness in the headlines…& profitable!
Please provide a link to the drafted plan so we all can see. (or upload it online)
Unfortunately, your plan for homeless gladiator fights on the beach is probably not legal.
So let me get this right…. For all the “we gotta do something” that I’ve heard since I’ve lived here (six years), what has actually been done? Safe parking, or the corralling of all rubber tramps to that part of the beach “to keep neighborhoods safe” The stimulus funding of the rescue mission and casa esperanz (millions?) centralizing the homeless to that area. (the writer’s main complaint,.. Of course always a convenient excuse for stereotyping everyone not as well of as most… Never a shortage of that in these articles-THANKS) Unemployment is at an all time high, which must leave plenty of time for some to tell someone else to get a job and fix the economy
Recently the Mayor suggested taxing downtown clubs for the cost of extra cops Will she do the same to banks that keep getting successfully robbed…. What about the parking garages, will we we be paying a higher price for our security?
Dead Horse is dead on… The proverbial constant beating of this issue does make some bank. You know if it weren’t for crime and homelessness, most so-called journalists in town would probably sink into some sort of catatonic depression! We’d probably find them in the corner babbling something about SBPD’s twitter feed
The Rescue Mission does not receive any public funding. It is run entirely off private donations, and focuses on personal responsibility and sobriety. Casa Esperanza receives $600k annually from the City of Santa Barbara, on the other hand, and has no performance objectives or requirements to meet for getting these taxpayer funds.
Stop providing for the lifestyle of eat, sleep, panhandle, drink,drug, eat sleep and they will
#1 Change to a healthier, self supporting lifestyle.
#2 Go to another town that provides for the lifestyle.
I would not upload this info to the public for fear that it would be mis-used by a Co. or indivd. for profit or recognition..no.
I’d like to take Mayor Schneider, Mike Foley and Grant House ,and the rest of the Homeless, Inc.crew on a walk down State Street any morning, any morning at all, and let the witness what they have created in the business district of America’s Riviera. Perhaps they could get some sense of what a disaster they have created by turning this place into a destnation for the down-and-out. Taking care of our own is one thing, but laying out the welcome mat and creating an industry around it is something else.
The Rescue Mission adds a dose of religion to their shelter generosity and misguided past city councils felt that was too intrusive and right-wingy, so they supported a non-sectarian shelter where agnostic vagrants could hang out too and not be subject to any forced religious demands in exchange for their free handouts. This was one of the major missteps that created an entirely different vagrant population in this town and the hugely negative impacts around Casa Esperanza where none of those NIMBY city council persons actually lived themselves.. Thank you past city councils for yet again blowing this troubling issue.
The current city council doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to fix this problem either…
City needs a come to Jesus moment with ACLU before they destroy our city with their bend-over pro-vagrant policies.
Was looking for writer contact using this post… I enjoyed the actual study. Many thanks