Ending homelessness: Manhattan Beach joins county plan, hosts community meetings
The City of Manhattan Beach is kicking off its effort to establish a plan to end homelessness with a series of meetings seeking community input. The first meeting, which focused on what the business community can do, took place Tuesday morning at the police/fire conference room. A second meeting takes place March 21. The entire community is invited to weigh in on the issue.
The effort is an outgrowth of Measure H, the $355 million sales tax measure passed by LA County voters last year, intended to address homelessness.
Abby Arnold, the city’s lead consultant tasked with helping formulate a plan, said that never before has the county marshaled so many resources for this issue. She noted that departments ranging from Beaches and Harbors to Health and even the County library system — as well as 46 cities — are working in concert to achieve an end to homelessness. Last year, 57,794 homeless people were counted living in the county.
“For me, going through this process, from the beginning the motivating [factor] is that everyone knows homelessness is a problem, and everyone wants to solve it,” Arnold said. “I’ve not found one person who disagrees.”
The annual homeless count last year found only six homeless people in Manhattan Beach; the newest count took place in January but the results have not yet been made public. The Manhattan Beach Police Department’s informal count shows about 20 homeless people in the city, although that number ebbs and flows.
Monica Fry, the retail operations manager for Manhattan Village Mall, noted that the homeless population that frequents the nearby bridge on Sepulveda always presents a challenge — on the one hand, mall management feels empathy for those folks, but they also need to make the safety of customers their foremost priority.
“For a private property owner, you want to enforce your rights, so you have [municipal] code there to help and protect you….We, as a team, have struggled with how to deal with the homeless, and how to help,” she said.
Downtown Business Association executive director Kelly Stroman expressed similar concerns.
“Is it the right thing to hand them food?” she asked. “Do we not give food? How do we handle that, because I think that is part of the reason they tend to stay in our downtown. They are being fed.”
One of the obvious solutions, Arnold said, is more affordable housing. But even that does not address every homeless person’s situation because some want no part of conventional security.
MBPD Lt. Ryan Small said the county-led effort is crucial because it represents a move away from treating homeless simply as a police enforcement problem and more as a broader social problem that needs to be dealt with on many levels.
“We know they need help, not incarceration,” Small said.
The community meeting on homelessness will also take place at the police and fire conference room, 420 15th Street, beginning at 6:30 p.m.