Legal action and strong demands for homelessness help brought up by Santa Barbara City leaders

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - The City of Santa Barbara's shoulders have been bearing the brunt of homelessness for decades and the current city council is digging its heels in on where the next solutions should be coming from.

At a meeting this week, presentations were made about the most recent outreach programs, housing plans and future efforts for dealing with a fluid flow of homeless people coming and going in the city.

Mayor Randy Rowse said the county needs to be more involved in action plans than it is now.

He specifically talked about restorative court to require those who have addictions or criminal tendencies to be offered a supervised program to redirect their lives.

The city, however, can not pay for the programs necessary to handle all of the solutions needed.

Rowse was also unhappy with a specific outreach effort saying, "I really don't like the idea that we are using Alameda Park as a Neighborhood Navigation center. I don't like the needle exchange there.  I want our parks to be parks."

Councilman Mike Jordan suggested legal action if the county does not do more to be part of the funding solutions and increase the mental health response necessary to deal with those on the streets who need the services.

The theme of funding, housing, mental health, drugs, crime and community outreach dominated the lengthy report.

The city also continued to support the Regional Action Plan (RAP) meetings and monthly neighborhood walks were specific areas were visited by residents, elected officials and homeless outreach workers, in person.

Jeff Shaffer with SB ACT (Alliance for Community Transformation) told the city council Tuesday, "homelessness is in every one of our neighborhoods. Whether you talk about near the library, the county building   our parks, it is everywhere."

It is sometimes difficult to explain how the programs work and fit together, when convincing the public there is a plan in place.

Shaffer said, "from the public perspective there's a lot of anger and disappointment and misunderstanding as to what is and  isn't being done."

Santa Barbara has been shouldering much of the burden on the South Coast and funding is a serious concern in the current times. Jordan said, "we can't sustainably continue to use ours.  We have structural budget deficits. We are losing our employees left and right because (they're) possibly underpaid,  we're eroding  our programs,  we're losing our ability to do day to day maintenance."

  
In a rare line-in-the-sand moment,  legal action was also mentioned to get more funding and services. Before that Rowse said, "we should definitely get into the county's grill about this "

Besides mental health issues,  drugs and alcohol are contributing factors to homelessness.

From walking the streets to personally see the issue, Rowse said, "we have a lot of 18-year olds out there who are absolutely hammered.  We are not doing the job in terms of prevention early on. " He said the issues starts as early as fourth grade.

With a stark reality check about the overall action plan ahead councilmember Kristin Sneddon said, "we can not have people dying in our streets. I don't know how else to put that.  Whatever it takes.  We just can't have it.   It is a humanitarian crisis"