Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. – Martin Luther King Jr.
Two Letters and a new email to the Editor regarding Casa Esperanza
The Santa Barbara police department has noted that transient-related crime has increased over 400% in the immediate area since Casa Esperanza began its operations, and 20% in the city overall. Recently, Casa Esperanza has begun a jail release program, not conditioned in their CUP, and which certainly has the potential to increase crime further.
The City of Santa Barbara, the county, and other cities within the county all provide thousands of dollars in direct funding to Casa Esperanza. Indirectly it costs the city far more for police and emergency medical support for incidents related to clients of Casa Esperanza. These are significant funds that could be spent to benefit the community in other positive ways such as youth programs, parks and street improvements.
Many of us would agree that helping the homeless is a noble and worthwhile cause. We’d also agree that there should be balance between the needs of the community and helping the homeless.
Apparently, the voices for insisting on helping the homeless were louder than community members asking for balance.
by Milpas Street Business Owner:
As I headed through the round-about under the new freeway underpass towards the beach, a homeless man openly urinated on the sidewalk in plain view of lunch time commuters, shoppers and families heading to the beach or up to Trader Joe’s.
Wow, I thought, this is what we’ve come to. They’re now pissing on the city in broad daylight.
In a recent meeting, the cops told us that a recent ruling from an appellate court handcuffs them from diligently going after nuisance street crime. The judge said that in order for a nuisance street crime to be prosecuted, it has to be considered shocking to the values of the community. The cops can no longer arrest someone for urinating in public because it’s no longer shocking.
To a neighborhood that is being asked to absorb this unrelenting assault on our sensibilities, this is a serious problem. The veneer of civilization is very thin. Little crimes lead to big crimes. A sense of lawlessness and disorder does not bode well for our city’s health and well-being.
As neighbors, we’re no longer sad about this. We’re mad. Enough is enough.
Email received by Cacique St business owner in response to a job ad:
Subject: Re: Showroom associate
Thank you for your response. I’m afraid I won’t be coming by. I do not go in that area due to the rude, dangerous people who frequent there and the homeless shelter. I have stopped volunteering there due to the vulgarity, drugs and violence.
Good luck with your search.
All I can say to you Sharon is…”I`m sorry”.
We were both promised a better “Santa Barbara” than the one we occupy.
a Chumash.
Whoa! the transient crime must be up 400,000 percent by now…. and it’s all the fault of the Casa Desperato too!
Ohhh…. The villianary of the courts too!!!!! No wonder SBPD is sitting around doing nothing all the time, it’s their hands that are tied up all the time!
And no funds “for the community” as well. Maybe that money could be spent by the POA ‘producing reality shows” or buying power within the judicial branch of the law. We never allow them to get what they deserve do we.
Thanks again. Happy Labor Day!
The City of Santa Barbara gave Casa Esperanza $100,000 in City Development Block Grant funding. That money could have been used to improve parks, provide key youth programs, or clean up blighted areas. That is what CDBG was intended for when the feds put it in place in the 70′s. Giving it to the biggest pimp in Homeless, Inc takes our community down, but keeps Casa staff employed. The Eastside has the right to be angry over that. They could have had a much nicer neighborhood if the city had spent the money appropriately over the years instead of dumping millions into Casa Esperanza to warehouse out of area transients that degrade our town.
Keep it up Sharon. We back you 100%. You keep the issue balanced at long last. Too many years or progressives who merely dumped the problems out of their own neighborhoods and that is almost a bigger crime than vagrancy run amok on Milpas.
At least voters are sending Progressives the message then need no longer apply for city council positions. Now Casa needs to get with the program too and live within its CUP.
This is ripe for all Milpas homeowners to take Casa to Small Claims court with each filing a public nuisance lawsuit for the maximum amount. This worked to clean up some very bad actor landlord whose residents were abusing a very large apartment complex on Modoc Road so MCA needs to look into doing exactly the same thing.
The offending landlord got the message when he found himself on the wrong end of a couple dozen Small Claims lawsuits about $6000 each. Exhaust your civil remedies first and if the city refuses to honor the CUP, you have taken this as far as you can go within city administration. Time to take it to court. Now.
It is good that the person writing this remained anonymous as this is terrible advice. There is massive precedent that social service agencies are not liable for the behavior of people when they leave the social service place of business. The first small claims case would be thrown out with prejudice. Not only that, but if a small claims judge were to attempt to reverse precedent, all small claims cases can be appealed. That means lawyers can defend the case, counter sue and the plaintiff can be required to pay massive legal fees at the appeal stage if they lose. No lawyer would ever take such a case to superior court – and to suggest that homeowners put their assets on the line in a potential small-claims appeal, when the law is clear, is like selling snake oil. Not sure who is providing this bad advice to the neighborhood, but yikes. I thought this idea had been put aside awhile back.
Small claims courts can issue injunctions in cases of public nuisances. If Casa Esperanza is violating its CUP and the public is denied proper administrative remedies, this is ripe for a public nuisance action filed by every single person affected by this city administrative neglect of its regulatory powers. Learn more about filing a small claims action in California to see if this is your best next step.
Talk to the residents of Modoc Road near Las Positas Road who used this to finally get remedial action from the offending landlord of a public nuisance, that negatively affected all the surrounding neighbors lives and was single-handedly the subject to continual police calls for disturbances of the peace and other zoning violations.
Very interesting anon.
So when a social service agency claims they will act in a responsible manner as a resident the neighborhood, they say this with both fingers crossed behind their backs? You say they know they have no legal obligation whatsoever to be good neighbors Nice to know this. Thanks for your insight into this rapidly deteriorating Milpas area situation.
Great column, again! However, I find this very hard to believe: “In a recent meeting, the cops told us that a recent ruling from an appellate court handcuffs them from diligently going after nuisance street crime. The judge said that in order for a nuisance street crime to be prosecuted, it has to be considered shocking to the values of the community. The cops can no longer arrest someone for urinating in public because it’s no longer shocking.” Could you please give a cite for that appellate case and also check with chief Sanchez and the DA to see if this is really the Santa Barbara policy. …Speeding, for instance, is common, yet speeders are stopped; DUIs are common, yet DUIs are prosecuted.
Here’s the deal: public drinking, inebriation and urination are still illegal on the books, but in reality they’re legal. When the police ticket offenders, the DA doesn’t prosecute. Why? Because juries tend to acquit. Jurors are annoyed by these cases, as they wanted to be on the big murder case. They think society should handle a public drunk or urination better than through prosecution. But in the rare case they do convict, the jail has no room for the convicted to serve their sentence, so they’re immediately released. The courts don’t like these cases as it clutters the court calendar, and conviction rates are low, while re-offender rates are high. So the court kicks them down, the DA kicks them down, the jail can’t hold them anyway. Basically the police are left handing out tickets with nothing behind them. Doesn’t take repeat offenders long to figure it out.
Keep taking that legal case up to the Supreme Court so that ALL communities have to abide by the same lax civic standards. Because right now plenty of other cities prohibit these very activities and not only get away with it, but send their shocking offenders down to Santa Barbara. Don’t stop fighting this until every city in California has to take its fair share of this detritus.
Penal Code Section 370 Public Nuisance
370. Anything which is injurious to health, or is indecent, or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by an entire community or neighborhood, or by any considerable number of persons, or unlawfully obstructs the free passage or use, in the customary manner, of any navigable lake, or river, bay, stream, canal, or basin, or any public park, square, street, or highway, is a public nuisance.
(Amended Ch. 614, Stats. 1873.)