Anonymous
Source: City of Santa Barbara
The City will use a $2 million Homeless Emergency Aid Program grant to collaborate with a variety of organizations to help the homeless population with health and housing issues, as well as address the needs of merchants downtown.
Notice how the town cannot bring itself to ask me for my plan to end homelessness?..
SB is so superior to us lowly citizens that they don’t need our help..but I say again;
When SB has had enough of this issue, stepped in enough poo or had their Grandma knocked in her head..perhaps you will meet my request.
Until then, it’s more of the same problem.
125,000 cash now.
CHIP: Hooray for cracking down on smoking in public. It’s a step in the right direction.
Homeless Inc. is our city’s second largest industry. It’s right behind corporate theft of public property AKA “Tourism”. Know that our city could not survive without grants from the state and feds. These are funds that make up for the fact that the city has already spent every last penny of every single dollar previously earmarked for essential services on themselves and their countless misgivings. Remember that next time you read one of these press releases touting the use of proceeds of a grant for X, Y or Z. These grants are filling the gaping holes left from years of city employees, managers and elected officials stealing from your grandkids piggy banks to enrich and employ themselves. And mark my words: they will be coming for more. Be on the lookout for a sales tax increase on the next ballot, not to mention a few more bond floats to help offset the budget misses and poor projection planning. Heck, there’s even a nice little byline on EdHat just above this story touting the reduction in interest rates and how wonderful the small change is for the city’s already overwhelming number of obligations. Sure Moody’s is keeping our rating high, but who in the heck believes anything the ratings agencies say after 2008? So ask yourself who is going to pay for all this? The homeowners and working residents of SB – that’s roughly 20k of you. It won’t be Goleta, nor Montecito, nor Carp, Ventura, Oxnard Lompoc or any other community that feeds from our trough. SB is a city of
there is another $2M down the drain. I wonder what pet agencies (donors) will get that $$
Beware, anyone caught smoking tobacco in Santa Barbara will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, let’s be careful no to alarm any drug addicts and make it clear that smoking meth in the city limits is A-ok. In fact, it is encouraged! Anyone caught smoking meth will get a cut of our new $2 million grant. Heck, we might even give you a free home to live in. Like I said, we are living in the twilight zone…
Santabarbaraobserver,
Observessantabarbarawell!
$2 million could put in 8 new bulb-outs for two intersections. Wasn’t it great when the city had money to throw away on bulb-outs? How about a traffic audit – did those very pricey bulb-outs lead to confirmed increase in pedestrian safety. Time we validated the value of our tax dollars spent – instead of just spending them and letting city council pat themselves on the back.
Homeless Inc hires a huge amount of support staff and “non-profit” administrators. That is where the money goes and why this problem will never be solved, too many people who already do have homes here, are the ones making the real money off Homeless Inc dollars. Those who make the most money off Homeless Inc dollars are the most vocal supporters of “doing more” or claiming “we are not doing enough”.
If the city addresses the homeless issue, does that give them an address I can mail things to?
“Corporate theft of public property AKA tourism”
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
Have you ever traveled outside of Santa Barbara? How did you do that with all the tin foil wrapped on your head?
Watch Seattle is Dying. This is the same stuff they tried.
There is no (ZERO) prosecution for personal drug use- as long as you’re not selling “substantial” quantities… Welcome to California after the voters passed Kamala Harris’ lenient positions on crimes to clear out our prisons.
Lesson one from the must-watch “Seattle is Dying”. Stop calling it “homelessness” and call it what it is: addiction. Treatment resistant addiction. Can’t solve the problem if we refuse to label the problem for what it is: drug addiction. It is not alcohol filling our streets – it is street drugs filling our streets, parks, open spaces, railroad tracts and spilling over into our business district and now private homes.
Throwing money will do nothing. It never has. More taxpayer funds wasted. The City should use that money to take the ACLU to court and change / adopt City Ordinances against loitering and vagrancy. The State has ruined Cities everywhere by decriminalizing drug use and issuing “citations” only for virtually any crime unless bodily injury is involved… Not to mention post Prop 47 which released 1000’s of felons from prison.
Don’t give drug addicts housing, unless the housing is locked, court ordered, drug rehab centers.
Citizens have the power, not government. Protest.
Wrong approach.
City council should just get a couple of dump trucks and drop the $2 million in a big pile in the intersection at State and Canon Perdido- people take whatever they can carry away, first come first served. At least this way the taxpayers have a shot at getting some of their money back.
Have a big pizza party!
The homeless will never see that 2 million dollars.
What you subsidize you get more of…
Your comment proves what cnn does to people.
Exactly Factotum. You don’t get paid to be homeless.
I know at least 2 of the homeless people living in SB. I can barely recognize them, let alone others that I might know. One of them is an old friend’s son that I gave a job to about 25 years ago. He could not do it, and my other employees had to pick up the slack. They ran him off. This young man was spoiled by his parents because he had learning problems, which were not labeled “ADD” nor anything else. He grew up in Montecito, and to this day some of his childhood friends that I know seek him out to give him money. I can’t decide if this is Right or Wrong. I do know that he is incapable of living a “productive life” and renting or buying a home here, where he grew up. He is often on State St. So, I cannot label him. Everybody has an answer, I don’t. Bleeding hearts and hard line people really don’t either. AAAAARRRGH. It would be nice if we could get Scotty to do the beam thing.
Affordable housing is a MAJOR problem, in fact, our most crippling issue, but homelessness is mostly due to mental illness and substance abuse.
Unless the money was thrown at solving substance abuse it will do nothing. Drug addiction needs to be addressed as a health problem, a disease, because that is what it is. If the powers that be focused solely on that, maybe something would change. Until then, you can put the homeless in homes, but they’ll trash them, steal, lie, do anything to keep using. Then there are the ones who are just plain mentally ill. When Reagan closed up all the state mental hospitals this is when the marked increase in homelessness began. We need to address the root problems, not throw a band-aid on the giant throbbing bruise.
Unfortunately it is true that bureaucratic types in government often feel compelled and “completed” when they hire themselves or those like them to “study” and create a report. The study is almost always a Potemkin Village of false fronts that reflect what the study authors want to say. And the result is almost always the recommendation for a “five year plan” that never is funded. Nothing gets done because the politicians know that actually doing something (such a providing real housing for the homeless) will set off a firestorm of protest from the entitled constituencies including homeowners, property owners, business and those just generally angry that the needy would get “something for nothing.” So the compromise is, as noted, to just study the problem some more. Sadly.
Whey should the “homeless” ( aka addicts) see that $2 million dollars. We want to get rid of them; not reward them.
I am appalled at the cynicism in these comments. The lack of trust of hardworking professionals in the government is completely ignored. This is a national problem and I fear what will happen if everyone is watching Fox news which could be working for Russia for all we know.
I am appalled Homeless Inc has gotten away with their con game in this down for so long, to the tune to millions of dollars to ensure the perpetuation of their own jobs that also require the growth of this unsavory client base. No more enabling, encouraging and apple polishing the counter-productive waste of dollars thrown at Homeless Inc.
Yesterday I took the Las Positas southbound off ramp twice. First time, 7;30 a.m. a panhandler was at the top of the ramp. There were cars backed up down the ramp and out on the 101. City police should have been called to address this unsafe situation. Second time at 2 p.m., another panhandler was walking down at least 5 car lengths on the ramp and coming up to each car. He was very unsteady on his feet and had to hang on to cars. The CHP should have been called to address this unsafe situation. Then over near MacKenzie Park, we passed one homeless guy passed out on the grass and two homeless guys sitting on the wall in front of Quality Inn drinking what looked like gin right out of the bottle. Police should have been called by the motel management to get those guys out of there. They are there daily, obstructing the pedestrian traffic (and all the workers at the dog park construction site just look the other way.) Not to mention all the litter accumulated at the fenceline, most of it from the same homeless group that congregate there on the sidewalk. They have their plastic milk carton out in the median where they take turns panhandling. All this, day after day after day.
Probably 95% of the visible homeless (bums on the street, panhandlers on the offramp, etc.) have serious mental health and/or sustance abuse issues. They cannot exist as productive citizens, and many if not most of them will not voluntarily submit to the kind of rigorous (and expensive) rehabilitation needed for them to re-invent themselves. Running them out of town or throwing them in jail or harassing them solves nothing, for there is an endless supply of these broken people. Court-mandated residential rehab with life and job skill training might help, but it’s tough to force people into that and it costs an enormous amount of money that taxpayers will not want to pay. I have a family member (not homeless, thank God) with serious substance abuse issues and it sucks the life out of everyone who loves and cares for him; he refuses to get help. On the bright side of things, for the temporariy down-and-out who really want to get back on their feet, there are lots of services here in town that work wonders.
I really hate to post this but what happened to the 12 year plan to end Homelessness? That was about 20 or so years ago when it came to Santa Barbara. Do you know what happens when you GOOGLE that? The first listing is “What happened to the 10 year plan to end homelessness in Knoxville? There are other cities listed Manchester, Portland, Burlington County New Jersey, Duluth, Yolo County, Missoula, just to name a couple…I was homeless for many years through out my childhood and early adult years I only stayed in three shelters each time for short peroids of time long enough to see where the donations went the good stuff went to the staff the crap went to the homeless. Just about every person I have talked to from other places that come here have some weird idea that all of the shelters here are open to them. When they get here they find out that they have all turned in Drug and Alcohol rehabs with strict rules that prevents them from staying there. So they stay near by with hope of getting in many of them are bused here from other parts of the country…go figure Trust in hardworking professionals in the government? Like politicians?
Dont kid yourself. People of all walks of life and political affiliations are tired of paying more and more taxes, fees and debt service for less and less and less. Our city’s staff and budget is bloated in every measure. While there may be good people, the volume of mediocrity and unnecessary workers outweighs any good these few people accomplish. Bureaucrats by their very nature act in their best interests, not the interests of those they serve. They are only interested in their survival, not the survival of their host. This is an absolute. We are sliding further and further towards insolvency because we support far too many social services and staff. Our payroll is HUGE, and the costs for pensions and benefits eating up what little is left over from years of poor management and overzealous financial projections. Our budgets are based on absolute best case scenarios, they are never based on reality or even adjusted for whiffs after the fact. Wake up! We are a town of less than 100k people. There is no reason to have such a large city government when the majority of residents do not receive any of the benefits. Its pure negligence to allow this to continue with only the “hope” that the ToT or some State or Fed grant will make up for the deficit or that things will just get better. The US and CA economy is on fire and yet we’re missing the tax projections! Think about that for a minute before you jump into some political rant. The city cannot even meet its obligations when times are this good. How are they going to weather a slowdown or a large earthquake hits? ———————————————————- We are in trouble because the city has not been run well, is currently not managed well and is not delivering what the tax payers and citizens need and want. Our “officials” are placating to small factions of special interests and kicking the can down the road hoping that we wont pay attention. And they’re right. Most people are far too busy working to pay their mortgage to pay mind. Paired with a poor understanding of fiances and economics, people just do not see the shell game being played by the city. But they will when the tax man cometh, they will when they see another bond on their property taxes, or their rent increasing by 25%. They will wake up when they see that the avg Joe at the city makes 100+k a year, while they are struggling to keep their car on the road because their job pays market rate for SB. This is SB where the employer can pay less and does pay less than market because an infinite number of people are willing to commute from 45+min away and/or just accept the “Sunshine tax” that eats into almost every non-government job in this town. ——————————— Please wake up, for your kids and grand-kids sake. We need to get ahead of this far more than we need to worry about sea levels. The financial tsunami is much, much closer and will be far more destructive to your life than the impending sea rise or climate shift. And for the record: I am not a conservative and do not watch FoxNews but I can read a balance sheet and run a P/L.
Yes AlexBlue. When our water, our beaches, our roads, our air our public services and our quality of life is gifted to outside corporate interests at a steep discount to its actual costs, it’s the privatization of public property for the profits of private industry. Did you know that the hotels pay less for their water and sewer than residents do? Did you know that they never had a single restriction during the drought? Did you know that their min-wage workers end up using social services and public funds to make up for their lack of income? What do you know? Please enlighten us with the facts and figures.
AMEN Observer! Everytime they enact some “feel good policy” that sounds great for their re-election efforts but does little to actually solve a real problem (plastic straw ban, drought cards on restaurant tables, etc.) they need to add more employees to manage the useless policy, but even when the issues is finally addressed, or people move on to the next, the city employees are still there, their benefits, their pension, ever growing…
Ha Ha …..As usual all the “professionals” seen in the video …and a bunch more “professionals” behind the scenes …will get most of the $$. Homeless will lose again. Problems sited: “alcohol, mental health, etc etc..blah blah blah . Not “real estate investment” ….nope, nobody ever blames that…Hmmm.
It is an addiction problem; not a housing problem. Addition prevents these street people from moving to areas that suit them better than high-cost Santa Barbara or even California. No, you will not see any of this money. But you might see someone from the Public Guardians Office once they use that money to expedite your case.
Will that’s your opinion Man….
After about mid 70s the low rent hotels (30$Wk) and flop houses of lower downtown became gentrified giving the ultra poor no where to live or sleep. The rescue mission on state st only slept about 15 people. DV away !
So much for charity.
Charity is never intended to support negative lifestyles. Does a charitable or even a government program increase dependencies or decrease dependencies is always the good question to ask. Charity as a temporary hand-up is good. Government programs that encourage dependency and continued social malaise should never be perpetuated. Some problems do need to be quarantined for the health of the surrounding community. The plague of government supported vagrancy is the best example of a societal problem than needs immediate quarantine; no “charitable” enabling.
You can’t even stay on topic. Typical double standard hate monger. Not about you.