Local Officials Look to Denver for Solutions to Homelessness

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

May 19 -- For the second time this year, City leaders left Southern California to find fresh solutions to Santa Monica's daunting homeless problem.

On the heels of a trip to New York City, local officials were among the hundreds of municipal leaders nationwide who attended a federal conference in Denver earlier this month to discuss homeless strategies being implemented in various cities.

The trip May 10 through 12 to the Mile-high city, which has seen an 11 percent drop in homelessness, could bring strategies such as incorporating the local and regional business community, as well as the faith-based groups, into a coordinated effort to tackle homelessness, City officials said.

"The main focus was how to stop seeing homelessness as a local crisis, but rather, as the national disgrace that it is," said Council member Kevin McKeown, who attended the conference sponsored by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), which coordinates federal and inter-municipal efforts to combat homelessness nationwide.

McKeown was joined by fellow council member Richard Bloom and Ed Edelman, the former Los Angeles County supervisor who is the City's regional coordinator on homelessness.

Speakers at the conference included USICH Executive Director Philip Mangano, business writer Tim Collins and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, whose efforts to combat homelessness in his City have made national headlines.

Like other cities, Denver has embarked on a ten-year plan to end homelessness. Under Hickenlooper's watch, a task force and commission to end homelessness was created and human and civil services expanded in the Denver area.

In a city of more than a half million residents, nearly 4,600 people are homeless, according to officials who attended the meeting.

Like Denver, Santa Monica -- a City of some 84,000 that claims nearly 2,000 homeless -- is evaluating its services and pushing new initiatives. The strategies include a program to get the homeless who have been on the streets the longest and are the largest drain on municipal and emergency services into housing before connecting them to services -- a model known as Housing First.

However, Denver, unlike Santa Monica, is much further along in getting its business community involved.

According to Council member Bloom -- who helped develop the Los Angeles regional plan to end homelessness in a decade -- Denver has been able to encourage businesses to chip in approximately $12 million to help fight homelessness.

"With the support of the business community (in Santa Monica and the surrounding region), we could easily outstrip the resources already promised by the County and City of Los Angeles," said Bloom.

Tens of millions of dollars were promised to combat homelessness from the County and City of Los Angeles. Additional tens of millions more were awarded to Los Angeles County by the state and the federal government because of the seriousness the problem.

The trick, said Bloom, is "finding common ground" with the business community, a process that has already started, he said.

The Santa Monica chamber of commerce held the first-ever regional meeting on homelessness for business chambers across the Westside of Los Angeles on April 28.

Kathy Dodson, the chamber's president and CEO, described the meeting as "positive," but noted that it was only a first step.

Harnessing the power of the business community -- which is oftentimes on the frontlines of the homeless problem -- could be a serious financial and political asset, Business and City leaders said.

The chamber's subsequent step is to host a meeting next Thursday (May 25th) that will focus on what the local business community can do to get involved.

Another strategy that may be imported from Denver is harnessing faith-based groups in a programmatic manner, local officials said.

In that City, each institution was asked to adopt one homeless person or family, but within the context of a larger citywide strategy.

"And by adopt I don't mean put them in the rectory," said Bloom. "Pulpits are a great place for consciousness raising."

Attended by other Southern California city and regional officials, the conference was also a great place for networking, a key component in expanding regional solutions to homelessness, Bloom and McKeown said.

In addition to the new ideas, McKeown said he "walked away with hope."

"For the first time, I'm seeing that other cities and other areas are seeing an actual drop in homelessness," he said.

The Denver trip comes after Santa Monica and LA officials toured New York in February and came back with several new ideas to help the County's estimated 88,000 homeless get back on their feet.

Creating informational cards for the public and the homeless and a separate court system for the mentally ill and drug offenses were just two local ideas spawned by the Big Apple trip. (see stories February 1 and March 29, 2006 )

Whether those successful strategies will work in Santa Monica and the surrounding area -- which experiences some of the highest level sof homelessness in the nation -- City officials are eager to find out.