Homelessness, a challenge we can only solve together

January 24, 2020 12:45 PM
by Rick Cole

Late Wednesday night, more than 300 volunteers assembled to be trained and to fan out across our community for the annual Homeless Count.  For more than a decade, this has been a critical measure of our success in dealing with the challenge of homelessness.

Implementation of deliberate strategy to focus on homeless individuals who were anchored in Santa Monica showed results in the counts beginning in 2010.  That year, the number of people counted fell from 917 to 742 – and for six straight years, that number held steady.  What that meant in tangible terms is that while new people appeared on our streets, sustained attention to familiar figures was paying off in getting others off the streets. 

Then in 2017, the numbers took off, zooming from 728 to 921.  It took local residents by surprise and many mistakenly attributed it to the opening of the Expo extension.  It gradually sank in that the increased numbers in Santa Monica reflected a countywide explosion in homelessness. 

Lots of theories have been advanced for the increase, but three factors bear mentioning.  First, the development boom in Downtown LA displaced many of those living in the sprawling Skid Row, sending deeply troubled individuals into other parts of the County.  Second, the impact of prison reform released tens of thousands of non-violent felons out onto the streets with little or no safety net to help them adjust to lives beyond bars.  Third, the rapid escalation of rents as the economy recovered from the Great Recession caused many low-income individuals and families to lose the roofs over their heads.

As painful as the new reality hit home in Santa Monica, the Council and the City were among the first local governments to pro-actively respond.  Well before the full brunt of the crisis hit, our City Council identified “a regional approach to homelessness” as one of their Strategic Goals and we hired Alisa Orduña as Senior Advisor to improve coordination of our efforts across departments and better collaborate with the County and neighboring cities. 

From the beginning, we in City government understood that the public sector can’t tackle this crisis alone.  Through the establishment of a Community Homelessness Steering Committee and the creation of the “We Are Santa Monica” campaign, we worked to mobilize resident, business, faith, civic and non-profit allies in the fight against homelessness.

Last year, we saw all our efforts begin to pay off.  Even as cities across the County and across California saw double-digit jumps in their homeless counts, Santa Monica’s count showed only a modest 3% climb, in part driven by counting more people living in cars.  Just as significantly, we saw a 19% drop in our count in the Downtown – the exact place where we’d concentrated resources over the previous year.

Too soon to know what this year’s count will tell us. Certainly, homeless numbers seem to be continuing to climb across the County.  But 2019 marked a year of clear progress in Santa Monica in some key areas, as outlined in a much more detailed update from Senior Advisor Orduña:

As part of the “We Are Santa Monica” effort, we’ve emphasized three simple words of advice for those who want to be part of the solution: donate, advocate and volunteer.  There’s a fourth dimension that’s also making a difference: partnering.
Some successful partnerships from 2019:

ABC News coverage of the 2020 Santa Monica Homeless Count (there is an opening advertisement)

The crisis in homelessness remains a critical challenge – and polls show LA County residents put it at the top of their list of concerns.  Yet despite the rising frustration, few have stepped forward to help, expecting government to solve this deep-seated and intractable set of problems. 

If you’d like to learn more or become involved, here are some practical ways to start:

Homelessness affects us all -- what are your thoughts? Please send me your feedback! 

Authored By

Rick Cole
City Manager