Time’s Up

   In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge said, “The business of America is business,” and thousands cheered, but, five years later, the stock market crashed, banks closed, countless businesses went bust, and millions of people lost their jobs and their homes. Compounding the catastrophe, an extended drought reduced the vast mid-section of the country to a dust bowl. When banks foreclosed on their farms, thousands of familes joined the army of poor and homeless people on the road.
   The crash, the collapse of business, the Dust Bowl brought America to its knees. In order to survive, America had to reinvent itself, to make itself new. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1932, “These unhappy times call for the building of plans…that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic barrel.”
   What followed was literally a second American revolution in which America rebuilt itself along more humane lines. For the first time, the Federal government developed assistance programs, such as Social Security, to ensure that Americans would never again fall all the way down and out as people had during the Great Depression.
   In time, the country found its footing again, and went on to become the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever known, but, 70 years after Roosevelt’s pronouncement, a sizable portion of the population remains “forgotten.” For all its wealth and power, America has more people living in poverty than any other developed nation.
And some of them are in Santa Monica.
   The City has long had a range of programs to assist poor and homeless people, but, the programs have been only partially successful – in part because it keeps changing the rules — usually in response to an orchestrated campaign in an election year.
   This year, the campaign is being waged by the Bayside District Corporation and downtown business people who allege that the extreme anti-social behavior of some homeless people is driving customers away. They have asked the City to ban feeding programs in public parks and to prohibit people from lying or sleeping in or adjacent to doorways in the downtown area, and the Council seems ready to go along with them – though, clearly, the proposed ordinances would simply compound what is already a complex problem.
For one thing, while the ordinances might reduce the number of homeless people in downtown Santa Monica, it would increase their numbers in other sections of the city.
   For another, the National Lawyers Guild has already said it will fight any effort to “outlaw private efforts to feed the hungry on the streets and in the courts.” Finally, such a ban would not only be clearly unconstitutional, it would be barbaric. People end up on the streets for all sorts of reasons, and the fact that they live on the streets does not mean that they have fewer rights, or needs, than the rest of us.
   We don’t condone violent or aggressive behavior in our streets, but the majority of the homeless people are as frail as ghosts, and far too frightened and uncertain to do anything but try to make it to the next day, and there are plenty of laws already on the books prohibiting the kinds of behavior that the Bayside District objects to.
   The federal government, the state, the county and other cities in this region have all turned their backs on the problems of homelessness. Perhaps, as has been said, Santa Monica has “more than its share of homeless people,” whatever that means. But, it seems to us, that our time and money would be better spent squeezing the feds, the state and the county for aid, money and programs than trying to squeeze the homeless people. We pay a Washington lobbyist nearly $70,000 a year and we have got millions out of Washington for streets and sewers and a laundry list of other projects. Are we lobbying for funds for shelters? Are State Senator Sheila Kuehl and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley pushing for state grants ? Are we badgering the county for assistance? And if not, why not?
   In any survey of residents, homelessness ranks high on the list of problems. It is time for this city’s leaders to address the problem and find solutions, rather than simply periodically pushing it around.