Santa Monica, an iconic California beach town destination attracting millions of visitors yearly, is facing a crisis, according to locals, with rising homeless and crime interfering with people’s safety, threatening the survival of businesses, and tarnishing the city’s reputation.
One passerby at Pacific Palisades Park, which stretches down the city’s coastline and crosses in front of the Santa Monica Pier, told The Epoch Times that as an elderly woman, she’s constantly on the lookout for what she called crazed homeless people during her daily walks through the park.
A man from nearby Beverly Hills, who was painting with watercolors, told The Epoch Times that he often enjoyed spending time in the area for his hobby, but since homelessness has risen, he no longer comes as frequently.
Homelessness has all but taken over the city, according to some.
The trend has dramatically changed the city, especially in the last decade or so, according to one local employee.
America Davila, a long-time employee at Bruno’s Italian Restaurant, located near the Santa Monica Pier, said she recently saw a homeless man, unprovoked, take a stick and break the windows of a car, whose driver was simply trying to park.
“He was just hitting random cars,” she told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Davila said homelessness has risen since the pandemic but first became noticeable when the metro was connected to Los Angeles. That was in 2016.
She said she misses the old Santa Monica.
“It was more calm, warm, and safe. Very Pacific, very friendly. I really liked that, I miss that time,” Ms. Davila said.
Based on the city’s size, Santa Monica has more homelessness per square mile than Los Angeles—which recorded more than 46,000 homeless people in 2023—averaging about 110 per square mile, compared to the city of Los Angeles’s 99.
Growing concerns over public safety have led some local business owners and commercial retail tenants to declare the city unsafe and to form an alliance to address the issue.
“Our Santa Monica members have reached a breaking point as they face a barrage of crime and homelessness issues,” Jot Condie, California Restaurant Association president and CEO said in a recent statement announcing the coalition of its members, those in the hotel industry, and other leaders in the community. “The safety of their guests and team members is at risk every day that the city doesn’t do more to turn things around.”
The group, called Hospitality Santa Monica, stated that it’s seeking to reverse what members say are failed city policies.
The new coalition joins the Santa Monica Coalition, a group of more than 5,000 retail tenants and property owners formed last year to raise awareness of such issues.
Because of the city’s uptick in crime, some local businesses have taken on additional security measures, adding to their already high operational costs.
“Due to the lack of action in ensuring safe and clean streets, we’ve had to allocate additional labor to secure the hotel perimeter. This is essential for the protection of both our team members and guests,” Diego Ruiz de Porras, general manager of Hotel Oceana, located on Ocean Avenue overlooking the Pacific, said in the November statement.
Homeless people sleeping in an alley behind the hotel must be regularly cleared out, and this creates a safety concern for guests, he said.
Some local restaurant owners, such as the head of Global Dining Inc.—which operates restaurants including 1212 Santa Monica on the Third Street Promenade, an outdoor shopping and dining area—said the movement aims to “affect positive change through better policies” and hopes to lower costs to business owners to help them thrive.
“We aren’t standing by because we believe in Santa Monica,” CEO Lucian Tudor said in the statement.
A manager at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ, located on Arizona Avenue, told The Epoch Times that it has become common to see homeless people sleeping on street corners or roaming the streets, seemingly under the influence of drugs.
One time, he said, a woman entered the restaurant and helped herself to the kitchen before he had to guide her out.
“A random person off the street has walked in the restaurant, walked past the host desk, walked in the kitchen, and just started cooking. My whole staff just got out of the way because there’s knives and things in there,” said Blake Gordon, one of the restaurant’s managers.
County-Funded Syringe Exchange Program
Both coalitions have asked city leaders to address public safety, with some putting blame on a Los Angeles County-operated program that contracts with a local health clinic and regularly distributes syringes in and near the city’s parks.During the same interview, he said locals are feeling the effects of the city’s soft stance on homelessness and limited police authority, with drug use in plain sight and panhandlers sleeping near popular attractions in the city.
Several stabbings this year have made national headlines.
In March, a city worker was stabbed at Palisades Park—which runs adjacent to the beach— after attempting to wake a sleeping homeless man, according to local media reports.
Community leaders have also been victims.
Mr. Alle told The Epoch Times that members of his coalition are thrilled to see restaurants and others in the hospitality industry in the area joining them.
“We are so pleased many of our downtown restaurants are finally stepping up to help us restore safety on the streets in Santa Monica,” he said.
The county’s health department works with the Venice Family Clinic, a community health center with several locations in the Los Angeles area, to distribute medical supplies, including needles, at three Santa Monica parks.
The city asked for the program to be moved, preferably to inside a nearby county-owned facility that offers substance abuse and mental health services, but the request was denied.
Few residents knew about the program, according to Mr. Alle and the Santa Monica City Council.
“There was never any discussion. We never really talked about it in city council meetings. It’s never been [on the agenda], so it was kind of a shocker for me to just hear that that was going on,” City Councilman Oscar de la Torre told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
According to the county’s health department, the clinic distributes about 100 syringes to 30 to 40 people each month, while disposing of dirty needles.
It also refers those interested in substance use treatment services, and refers individuals for free HIV or hepatitis C testing.
“The Santa Monica services continue to serve vulnerable people in need of support and services,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a recent email.
But since March, more than 16,000 Santa Monica residents have, at the urging of a petition by Mr. Alle’s organization, sent letters to the city asking once again for the needle distribution program to be moved indoors and for it be conducted under medical supervision.
Residents, Business Owners Ask City Council for Help
Jon Farzam, co-owner of The Shore Hotel—located on the Pacific Coast Highway near the Santa Monica Pier—said during a June council meeting that hotel owners are losing reservations because of the city’s growing homelessness problem.“I’m here ... to plead for your help in addressing what’s become an untenable situation of homelessness, crime, harassment, and filthy conditions on Ocean Avenue and Palisades Park,” he said during the meeting.
Mr. Farzam read a note from a guest who recently said they wouldn’t be returning because of such issues.
“This city has handed itself over to homelessness. Businesses like yours should have taken a stand a long time ago. Your hotel and any other hotel here is no longer safe for families,” he read.
Mr. Farzam gained the attention of former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who posted a short clip of the comment on social media and called out the city for not addressing the issue.
One homeowner said his wife and dog were spit on by a homeless man during a walk last summer. He told the council to stop focusing on issues such as banning plastic straws or increasing bike lanes until public safety is addressed.
“The Promenade, the Library, they’ve turned into absolute hell holes. ... Stop coddling homeless vagrants and [the] mentally ill. It’s not fair to people who pay taxes,” he said.
A mother of three teenagers said during the meeting that the city is preventing her children’s growth and independence, since, she said, they feel that they can’t safely walk the streets anymore.
While taking her sons to school, a homeless woman near the intersection of Fourth Street and Olympic Boulevard started “pounding on my car violently,” she said, and then the woman started taking off her clothes.
Later that day, her son saw “two homeless people defecating,” she said.
“You are stifling the development of the children of this city. ... The idea of going to the public library is not even something we entertain anymore,” she said.
