Santa Monica to Sue County Over Help for Homeless

The city of Santa Monica, in a rare move, will take Los Angeles County to court in an effort to force officials to improve services for the mentally ill homeless.

The Santa Monica City Council authorized the lawsuit during an executive session Tuesday night against the advice of Mayor Christine E. Reed. City Atty. Robert M. Myers said he expects to file the case in Los Angeles Superior Court within two weeks.

The lawsuit, the first to be filed against the county by a municipality over the homeless, comes in response to a persistent problem with vagrants in Santa Monica. As many as 1,000 homeless have converged on city parks and beaches in recent years, angering residents, causing problems for police and dividing the City Council over ways to respond.

Councilman Alan Katz, who supported the lawsuit, said the city has run out of patience. He said he hopes the courts will require county officials to provide more shelters and better social services for vagrants. Officials estimate that half of the vagrants in Santa Monica may be mentally ill.

“This should be perceived as a positive step, not a negative one,” Katz said. “It gives the county an opportunity to seek more state funding.”

The county counsel’s office declined to comment on the suit, although Nancy O’Hara, senior deputy in the office, did say that Santa Monica will be the first city to file such a case here.

Mary Lee Gray, senior deputy to county Supervisor Deane Dana, who represents Santa Monica, said the lawsuit is unwarranted.

She said the county spends $128 million a year on social services for the homeless. She said her office has made every effort to cooperate with Santa Monica and even offered the city more than $1 million for a homeless shelter earlier this year. Gray said the offer was rejected because the city wanted vagrants to go elsewhere. She charged that Santa Monica’s lawsuit is politically motivated.

“Lawsuits are never successful in getting to the root cause of a problem,” Gray said. “Our door remains open to the city of Santa Monica, but I feel that they could have approached the problem in a much more realistic manner. We are deeply saddened that they responded in this fashion.”

The council supported the suit by a 4-2 vote. Councilmen Alan Katz, Herb Katz, Dennis Zane and James P. Conn voted in favor. Councilman William H. Jennings and Mayor Reed were opposed. Councilman David G. Epstein, who works as an attorney for Orange County, abstained because of a possible conflict of interest.

Reed said she doubts that the city will benefit from the lawsuit. She said political pressure and lobbying could bring a faster solution to the problem.

“I don’t believe that a lawsuit facilitates an atmosphere for change,” Reed said. “The people who are sued get angry and intransigent. . . . I would expect that we have lost the opportunity to make other gains here.”

But Alan Katz said he does not expect any political backlash from the suit. “Some people think that the county will retaliate against us,” Katz said. “But I don’t think that the county is that cynical or hypocritical.”

Katz and other officials denied that the suit is politically motivated. He said the city is looking for a location for a shelter for vagrants but believes that the county should do more to solve the basic causes of homelessness, such as increasing services.

City Atty. Myers said the county has offered inadequate solutions. “The establishment of a single shelter is not going to address the county’s failure to provide wide-ranging mental health resources for homeless individuals,” he said. “The spectrum of facilities needed . . . is wide-ranging.”

Santa Monica has been grappling with the problem of the homeless for more than two years. Officials say the city receives more than its share of vagrants because of its proximity to downtown Los Angeles, its agreeable climate and its policy against prosecuting nonviolent homeless people.

The city has allocated more than $600,000 for social services for the homeless this year. City Manager John Jalili said the city already spends far more on the homeless than most municipalities and cannot increase its budget. This year it received about $1.5 million from the county for the homeless.

A city task force on the homeless recommended the lawsuit as a way to force the county to provide more funds. Paul DeSantis, an attorney who is a member of the task force, said the suit is supported by several groups in the city, including the clergy, merchants and businesses, including tour offices.

“Sometimes the only way to break a log jam is with a stick of dynamite,” DeSantis said. “The city is tired of dealing with this problem.”