Homeless Project’s Initial Costs Put at $11 Million

SANTA MONICA —  The programs suggested by a citizens task force to cope with the homeless crisis in Santa Monica carry a price tag of $11.25 million for start-up costs and could cost as much as $7.1 million a year to operate, city officials said.

The long-awaited cost analysis was presented to the City Council on Tuesday, more than three months after the Santa Monica Task Force on Homelessness presented a comprehensive set of recommendations.

Though Santa Monica was never expected to bear the brunt of the cost of the programs, the city has identified $800,000 for immediate use for start-up costs, plus $300,000 a year to help defray ongoing operating expenses.

City officials hope to get county, state and federal money for some of the housing programs, but a financial partnership with the city is often a prerequisite to obtaining funding.

The city already spends $1.1 million a year a year on programs for the homeless and has recently added a full-time coordinator for the homeless to the city staff.

The proposals “clearly require the partnership of many funders,” said Julie Rusk, acting manager of the city’s community development department. “I want to underscore this is not $7 million in city funding.”

The 18-member task force was formed last year to advise the council on the divisive issue of how to manage the city’s large, sometimes unruly, homeless population. Their job was accomplished in a charged atmosphere. Residents have expressed mounting frustration over what some feel has been a takeover of the city’s public places by the homeless.

The recommendations, covering areas from public safety to housing and services, were adopted by the council in December. “We all need to give some in order for all of us to benefit as a community,” task force co-chair Rhonda Meister told the council Tuesday night.

Announcement of the cost of the task force recommendations comes at a difficult time for Santa Monica. The usually well-funded city is coping with a $3-million to $5-million budget shortfall and the prospect of 5% across-the-board budget cuts for the upcoming fiscal year, Rusk said. In order to find more money to fund programs for the homeless, the council would have to order more severe cuts in other programs or city staff.

A decision on the funding and implementation schedule for the task force recommendations was delayed until the next council meeting. But the council unanimously agreed to revamp zoning codes and fees to make it easier to build affordable housing and shelters.

Attorney Sheila Kuehl, who heads the board of directors at the Ocean Park Community Center, said none of the group’s shelters could be established today because of restrictions in the zoning code.

Originally, the task force had intended to include cost estimates in its final report to the council, but at the last minute the citizens group determined that it was impossible to come up with informed figures and still meet the council’s deadline for delivering the final report.

Because it lacked the bottom line, the report was criticized by some as being little more than a wish list. One of the critics, Donna Alvarez, continued to hold that view on Tuesday. “I want to know how we are going to fund it,” Alvarez said at a public hearing Tuesday night.

Alvarez was especially critical of the proposal to spend $35,600 a year for a speakers bureau so the task force model could be spread to other cities. “I think that’s asinine,” she said.

Nearly all of the $11.25 million in start-up costs involves developing more places for people to stay--emergency shelter beds, transitional housing and single-room-occupancy units.

The task force placed a priority on the construction of 24 transitional housing units, which the United Methodist Church plans to build, 36 single rooms planned by Step Up On Second, a day center for the mentally ill, and 55 beds in transitional housing.

Keeping day programs open seven days a week will cost as much as $325,000 a year. Moving the daily homeless meals program from the City Hall lawn to three smaller sites where it would be linked to social services would cost an estimated $35,077 a year.

The plan to decentralize the meals program and move it indoors has already drawn complaints from merchants on Colorado Avenue near 7th Street, where an Ocean Park Community Center facility would provide two meals a day.

Though lines outside the facility would be minimized by a reservation system and monitored by park rangers, a group of merchants beseeched the council to pick another site because they fear a daily parade of homeless people will scare off their customers. The other two proposed meal sites are Step Up on Second and the Salvation Army facility in downtown Santa Monica.