Neighborhood Group Vows to Fight Homeless Center

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

July 25 -- Wary of having hundreds of alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill and criminals hanging out in their backyard, the Pico Neighborhood Association has launched a campaign to stop a proposed two-story homeless shelter from being built at Cloverfield Boulevard and Michigan Avenue.

The group -- which contends its neighborhood is a dumping-ground for Santa Monica’s social services -- fears the 33,000 square-foot facility will degrade their neighborhood, which is already home to the largest number of community housing projects and social service centers in the city.

“Our neighborhood already has its fair share of social services,” said Peter Tigler, the PNA vice-chair. “It’s about time that if Santa Monica wants to provide social services to the homeless that everybody pitches in, not just the Pico Neighborhood.”

Tigler said the site adjacent to the Freeway -- which is close to schools, residences, Santa Monica’s art center and some of the City’s biggest business complexes -- is not appropriate and “will only increase the magnitude of the problem” currently experienced at the shelter’s current location near Downtown.

“We don’t want what’s happening at 6th and Colorado to happen here -- bodies littered all over the street, and we don’t want that here,” said Tigler.

Tigler pointed out that his neighborhood already is home to the Salvation Army, the Sunlight Mission, the Ocean Park Community Center and more than 600 low-income housing units.

The group plans to make its presence felt at the August 12th City Council meeting, where OPCC will be asking for a $7 million loan for the project.

“We're going to let those council members know who are up for reelection in a year that we're going to actively campaign against them if they don’t listen to us,” Tigler said.

After five years searching for the right location, the shelter, which is expected to open in Fall 2005, would add 35 beds to the current 20 and serve as the second home of OPCC's Access Center and Daybreak Shelter programs, complementing the agency's 55-bed facility on 16th Street.

The new center will offer transitional housing (a place to shower, eat, and sleep); drug rehabilitation, psychological and job counseling and case management. The social service agency has said it plans to build a wall around the front yard of the center where program recipients will gather, both for aesthetics and for the safety of the neighborhood.

“There are times…when a proposed solution would create far more problems than it would actually solve. Such is the case with the proposed shelter,” reads the group’s Web site. The site calls on residents to lobby council members and city officials, protest OPCC’s upcoming community outreach and call on neighbors to join in the fight.

The Web site also lists alternative locations for the shelter, including the RAND complex (which the City already owns and is closer to the City’s Human Services and the Downtown homeless population), the Robbins Auto Top building across the street from the current shelter and the soon-to-be-vacant old police station.