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Local News » City Subcommittee Lays Groundwork for Policies on Homelessness

City Subcommittee Lays Groundwork for Policies on Homelessness

By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer | Published on 12.18.2008

The city’s homeless subcommittee is putting together a raft of proposed policies for addressing homelessness in Santa Barbara. The ideas range from reining in aggressive panhandling to providing more beds for the city’s homeless.

Specifically, the proposals include outlawing verbal panhandling — legally referred to as “soliciting” — near certain areas, such as ATMs, bus stops, outdoor restaurants and admission lines.

They also may include adding at least one foot-patrol officer and several social workers to the downtown streets, increasing the overnight capacity at the Casa Esperanza Homeless Shelter and curbing the amount of intoxication in the lower Milpas Street area.

The subcommittee, which is made up of three City Council members, met Thursday mostly for the purpose of allowing the public to chime in on the draft proposal before it is fine-tuned next month. In February, it will be brought to the full seven-member City Council for possible adoption.

In general, subcommittee members Iya Falcone, Helene Schneider and Dale Francisco said they are striving to tackle the thorny issue in a balanced way, by cracking down on unacceptable behavior while extending a compassionate hand to those in need.

Thursday’s meeting drew a crowd of about 30 people, some of them business owners with a stake in trying to rein in aggressive panhandling, and some of them homeless advocates with an interest in ensuring that the vulnerable population is treated with dignity.

With a few exceptions, most parties seemed satisfied with the draft of proposals, but there were some disagreements.

One centered on whether to expand Casa Esperanza’s overnight shelter. On this, two officials on homelessness clashed, with Roger Heroux—chair of the county’s 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness—in favor of it and Casa Esperanza board member John Dixon opposed to it.

Half of the shelter’s 200 beds sit empty during the year’s nine nonwinter months, because of conditions of approval placed upon the facility by the city Planning Commission to appease neighbors who opposed the project before it was built in the late 1990s.

Heroux asserted that at least some of those beds should be opened up to serve the more vulnerable members of the homeless population, noting that the number of homeless seniors, children and women is rising dramatically nationwide.

“The last four nights, our temperatures have been in the 30s,” said Heroux, who is also the executive director of a relatively new organization called Bringing Our Community Home, which is responsible for coordinating the county’s 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. “How can we even tolerate people who have hearts, minds, bodies and souls — allow these individuals, as vulnerable as they are — to live on the streets of Santa Barbara?”

Casa Esperanza Executive Director Mike Foley added that he and his staff may request increasing the number of available beds to 140 from 100 during the nonwinter months, to serve only the most vulnerable members of the homeless population, such as women and people with disabilities.

However, Dixon, owner of Tri County Produce, noted that his business and others in the lower Milpas Street area already have experienced a serious increase in traffic since the shelter opened. Opening up more beds, he said, would exacerbate that trend.

“Good old-fashioned policing is really what’s needed, and we also need more of it,” he said. “Police presence on State Street and Milpas.”

In general, business people said they, too, want to see homeless people treated with compassion, but also want to see aggressive panhandlers and other homeless people who act out dealt with appropriately.

To that end, the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization has offered to pay half of the estimated $90,000 cost for a part-time retired police officer.

Kathy Janega-Dykes, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara Conference & Visitors Bureau, reminded the committee that tourism in the county is a $1.4 billion industry.

“We promote Santa Barbara as a resort destination that is clean, that is green, that is safe and enjoyable, and aggressive panhandling contradicts that image in every way,” she said. “These recommendations are truly well-rounded, and they are designed to also protect our economy.”

Meanwhile, city attorney Steve Wiley pointed out that the proposed restrictions on panhandling would not apply to people holding up signs, which is constitutionally protected activity. For this reason, the proposal refers to the ban-able practices as “soliciting,” which essentially amounts to verbal panhandling.

In addition to banning the practice near ATMs, bus stops and outdoor restaurants, the policy also would outlaw the activity within parking structures and while sitting on downtown city benches.

There is also a proposal to create a “recovery zone” on lower Milpas Street. It would happen with an eye toward curtailing the high levels of drinking and drug use in the area, for the benefit of recovering addicts.

Under the proposal, the zone would include nearly everything on Milpas Street and some surrounding neighborhoods south of Highway 101. There, anyone who has been arrested for selling drugs in the area would be prohibited from returning until the completion of his or her probation period. Also, merchants who engage in the illegal practice of selling booze to intoxicated customers would be more closely monitored.

The idea, Milpas Action Task Force member Gary Linker has said, is to chip away at an unfortunate irony: The shelter attempting to help so many drug addicts is surrounded by drug pushers, most noticeably at a nearby labor line, where unemployed men wait around all day for on-the-spot construction work.

Write to rkuznia@noozhawk.com.

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