Santa Barbara News, Views, & Hyperlocal Information
The community was asked whether Santa Barbara’s $50,000 solution to deal with all-day panhandlers – turning 14 benches perpendicular and removing the backs from others – was a good one. The response was overwhelming, comments below…
PS: The $50,000 needed to relocate the “loveseat-sized, Mission-style wooden benches” was to come from redevelopment funds.
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{ I grew up here, enjoying the beaches and state street for many years. Cabrillo blvd is embarassing, and i dont feel safe going there alone... } – May 17, 9:57 PM
{ You are spot on!!!! reality } – May 17, 4:32 PM { If moved out to the airport, most of the tramps will go elswhere as there is no money to beg in goleta! } – May 17, 4:30 PM { Dont they get a lot of there $$$$ from the people that live up on the hill and need a tax break so it makes... } – May 17, 4:29 PM { Its amazing the things one single brain can think up and then it must be true! isnt it? media } – May 17, 4:25 PM
{ By getting prisoners out of the state correctional system, it reduces the numbers that now get to demand federally mandated deluxe health care the rest... } – May 17, 12:05 PM
{ Hove? Seriously... That's the nine to five, meat and potatoes restorative program I liked to be running. These people are called "on the streets" for... } – May 17, 11:15 AM { Once concentrated at the Moreton Bay Fig Tree doing drug deals with truckers stopping at the old Highway 101 stop lights, the bums moved on... } – May 17, 9:34 AM
{ El Smurfo - you're ahead of me! I wanted to write about those latter two camps in next week's column, because you are correct: they... } – May 17, 9:33 AM { Homeless Inc did estimate bums were collecting over $500,000 a year in street donations from "well-meaning" bleeding heart pigeons. No wonder they come to SB:... } – May 17, 9:32 AM { Addicts don't leave you alone between their fixes. They burgle houses, yours and mine, getting the good to fence for ready cash for their next... } – May 17, 9:29 AM
{ There's always Disneyland... } – May 17, 9:17 AM { If its for the children, then clean up the parks in their own backyards first. Until you can keep Bohnett Park from being a chronically... } – May 17, 9:13 AM { We need to clean up the parks we already have and keep the bums from ruining them for the rest of the public. We don't... } – May 17, 9:10 AM { The only medical research on pot is done with controlled, calibrated prescription grade products like Marinol. You can do no medical research with any other... } – May 17, 9:07 AM
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What about those of us non-panhandlers who use the benches? I walk down to State Street once a week to eat lunch and read. Without a bench, I’d be screwed. I wish the City would pass (or enforce, if they already have them) anti-loitering and anti-panhandling laws.
Agreed. The benches were intended for allowing a tourist, senior or just your average citizen to rest after a long day on their feet. I do no understand why it is “legal” to take over a bench as your nearly permanent home, including piles of belongings.
I need a bench when my wife’s shopping. At the gym they have a maximum use time for the treadmills somewhere around 30 minutes max. That might make sense to move people along.
AFTER THERE’S NO PLACE TO SIT, THIS CITY WOULD TRY FUNDING A PROGRAM TO PROVIDE THE HOMELESS WITH HOVERROUNDS!
If that happens, then the Terrorists would win.
If this poll was conducted on State Street the final outcome would be 20% yes, 20% no and 60% will respond with can you spare a dollar
Don’t know how you’d enforce a 30 minute usage policy. Maybe the parking people who drop white spots on tires could walk state street instead of the side streets.
As decent human beings, we need to be thinking of strategies that make it easier, not more difficult, for those less fortunate than ourselves. There is no excuse for the fact that in a wealthy community in a wealthy country, there are people who have no place to live and not enough to eat. These people are our brothers and sisters. It’s not for us to judge how they got into their current troubles. Help each other, folks.
If they are our brothers and sisters then we should take them into our homes and feed and care for them, pay their medical bills, help them get off of booze and drugs and stash their belongings in our garages. If you are going to wait for someone to do something, then you’re going to wait a long time. Please, all of you, adopt a homeless person.
Chumloadio, why don’t you be the first to take a homeless person in and find out that they don’t want your benevolence.
AMEN to 11:12, well said.
I second the AMEN of 11:24 am. Getting rid of the benches is stupid and naive. If a person needs a place to sit down (ANY person), the benches are there for them. The BENCHES are not the problem. It’s the attitude of law enforcement. The homeless people are doing what they can to survive – to make life even harder for them is NOT the answer. We need a place that is safe for these homeless people to go. The reason, as I understand it, that they don’t like the shelters is that they are preyed upon by other homeless people. Make the shelters safe!
11:12 Have you invited them to camp out on YOUR block?
Several options come to mind …
1) an area downtown where benches for transients can be concentrated (e.g., the lawn outside the library, which is transient territory already);
2) removing just the benches that transients use most frequently (e.g., McDonald’s, Borders);
3) turning the benches so they don’t face the sidewalk (makes them less useful for panhandling).
This issue has little to do with “compassion”. Santa Barbara is more welcoming than most cities these days, with meals, shelters, outreach, etc. The benches are not homeless shelters and if the shelters themselves are dangerous, it makes more sense to have one dedicated officer patrolling them rather than 5 patrolling State.
Santa Barbara is a haven for the homeless / can’t imagine any city being more acommodating.
Try removing some of the benches and see how it goes, or where the pan handlers go
There is a hungry stray cat on your doormat in front of your house.
Do you throw away your doormat?
The doormat is not the problem.
The cat needs food and a place to live.
Or you move the doormat around to the side so the cat isn’t visible on the front porch.
A hungry homeless cat at the side of your house may still be an unresolved issue, depending on your compassion toward cats.
Benches are not the problem. Hungry people are the problem, whether they are in sight of the public or pushed off to the “side of the house”.
Hunger is not the problem.. its thirst! i say we keep the benches and convert the water fountains to ones that pour cheap vodka.
Don’t be fooled. Many of these bums are living on State St. as a lifestyle choice.
1) Lots of cute babes.
2) Don’t have to work for money.
3) Drugs and alcohol readily available.
4) Excellent panhandling opportunities.
5) Hanging out with all your best buddies.
The Kings of State St.
Oh yeah, and
6) Urinate wherever you want. Even in your pants.
Removing benches from State Street to keep the homeless from sitting and panhandling is about as bright an idea as constructing a fence on the Cold Springs Bridge to prevent suicide prone individuals from jumping. Panhandlers will just sit somewhere else and jumpers will find something else from which to jump.
I’m pretty sure the homeless are eating our stray cats…
Substitute “thirsty” for “hungry” in many of the preceeding comments and you start to see that the problem is a bit trickier than just providing food and shelter…you can’t help those who won’t help themselves.
You know, maybe they could install parking meters by the benches. As long as you fed the meter, you could sit there. That would be a nominal cost for regular people, but discourage panhandlers from camping out. I’d gladly pay $.25 to sit on a bench for half an hour.
The idea to turn around the benches is a good one. Would make for improved parade seating as well!
After all, people come to Santa Barbara to come downtown and sit to get a good view at creeping traffic and to inhale smoggy exhaust.
Prohibitions on sitting was a joke ordinance in 1998 or so.
If the reason would be to keep transient types from sitting, they’d simply sit on the curbs or more would pile all the stuff against the buildings and sit there with hands out. And the few non-homeless who now use the benches would have no place to do so.
This seems punitive. Better would be to strongly educate against giving $-handouts. As for ordinances against anything, how would they be enforced? And if fines, how would they be paid? If jail time (!) where would that be? …There needs to be some reality thinking.
This discussion continues tonight with a community meeting at the Canary Hotel, 5:30 p.m.
The Downtown Organization and the City of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency will present a proposal to remove or relocate some benches on the 800 and 900 blocks of State Street. Sketches will be available for feedback.
The problem is the bums, not the benches.
Thanks for having the balls to say it!
The police need to cite and remove these people. Have you noticed, these are the smae ones day after day. Theya re a blight and shoudl not be allowed to pollute our downtown area wich we rely so heavily on for tourism. We need to pass an ordinace that prohibits these people from the toursit spots. Enough of the liberal BS and do something about it (im not a Republican).
Learn how to spell if you are going to give your suggestion to the public.
Didn’t Mickey Flacks establish local case law related to this years ago by her intentional arrest for sitting on State Street ? The issue is discrimination against the homeless and those who don’t appear affluent. I’m not aware of complaints about well-dressed people with Nordstrom’s shopping bags resting on State Street benches.
Well dressed people with Norstrom’s shopping bags don’t set up housekeeping on benches.
May we skeptically address the issue of discrimination? Whether it’s parking my car for 15 minutes, 30, 60, 75, or 90 minutes, I need to move my car, in those areas that are marked as such. “Well, that’s easy,” you might say. “There’s a time limit, there’s no time limit on the benches.” Yet in unmarked parking areas, there are still time-limited periods. Different governing bodies have different time limits from two days to two weeks, move it or it’s ticketed/towed. It doesnt’ matter if it is Rambler or a Rolls, no discrimination, the format remains – just because you get there first do you own public property for as long as you wish? If the skeptics would focus as much attention on the Titanic, as on the lifeboats, perhaps we could avoid the next iceberg in our path.
My wife and I used to go to Santa Barbara every other weekend. We would stop and get a burger and then buy extra’s for some of the homeless. Then as we turned the corner and turned back,we watched as the food was tossed into the gutter and one remarked to the other, and I quote ” We don”t need food, we need money for alcohol”. The homeless in SB started getting militant just like up in Frisco. We don’t go to SB anymore because of the problem. I really don’t know what the awnser is but it does affect the businesses and people of SB.
There are laws against loitering. Enforce them. Keep the benches, get rid of the bums.
Imagine how the bums would leave if we eliminated sidewalks all-together?
There are no laws for loitering; those were deemed unconstitutional. Keep the benches; its the unsightly and lazy we want to be rid of. Business owners should buy and have the City abandon State St., make it a private road, and kick people out they dont want; legally! Ever notice no pandhandlers, bums, losers, transients etc lurking along any part of Paseo Nuevo? Not often.
Why aren’t these people in one place all together, kept hydrated and medicated and out of my sight? Like in the old day, before Reagan was Governor (RIP)?
Get them off the streets, PERIOD.
I say give the businesses that the benches sit in front of the power/authority or whatever it is to monitor. If there is a person sitting out there for too long the business can ask them to move on. The city makes the businesses belong to the Downtown Organization, the least they can do is give them some power.