At a town hall meeting last Thursday, Public Safety Manager Susan Dueñas presented a draft of Malibu’s “Strategic Plan on Homelessness” to the public for the first time. The city’s plan, developed with the aid of consultants and a $50,000 grant from LA County, listed seven goals to help alleviate homelessness in the community and 40 specific actions to accomplish those goals.
Dueñas described the meeting as a “sneak preview” of the plan, which hasn’t yet been presented to City Council.
“But it’s already had a lot of community input through advisory groups and an online survey, and represents a broad variety of people and organizations,” she said. “We’ve learned there are basically two camps of people in Malibu when it comes to the homeless issue—those who feel compassion for the homeless versus those who feel threatened by them.”
“There’s a lot of real and perceived fear of the homeless here,” Dueñas observed.
Malibu’s goals are to get the homeless into permanent and temporary housing within the county; ensure public health and safety; prevent homelessness among Malibu residents; provide outreach and support to the homeless; inform Malibu residents of actions taken; work with government officials to improve bureaucracy over homeless services; and develop oversight of Malibu’s homeless programs.
The city will be looking at various performance measures to judge its effectiveness in helping homelessness, including the annual Malibu Homeless Count, number of homeless taken off the streets and calls to the sheriff’s department.
After reviewing the detailed plan, which can also be read online at bit.ly/MalibuHomelessStrategicPlan, public discussion was not focused on the plan, but rather on other questions and issues about homelessness.
When asked what actions will take priority, Dueñas gave two: to continue with the field outreach being done by The People Concern—which “has resulted in 79 people being taken off the streets in 18 months”—and increasing public safety, especially by getting rid of encampments.
An encampment in the Civic Center area caused a wildfire in January that burned three acres before it was quickly contained, causing the evacuation of the Malibu Knolls neighborhood.
Lt. Jim Royal of the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Station, in response to ongoing criticism from some residents about a perceived lack of law enforcement regarding Malibu’s homeless population, took the opportunity to educate the public.
“We stepped up enforcement and camp management, citing fire danger issues, and our number one priority is public safety,” Royal said. “We go out to the camps all the time.”
“Sometimes people keep seeing the same guy at Ralphs or the library being disruptive, and they think we’re not doing anything about it,” Royal continued. “Chances are, it’s an individual who doesn’t know they have a mental health problem, and he’s stealing from Starbucks and sleeping on the sidewalk, but not really committing any crimes that merit jail time. Trespassing is only one day in jail. If someone steals from Starbucks, how much jail time is that worth?”
“One homeless man was arrested 26 times in one year,” Royal added. “The criminal justice system is not designed for small offenses committed by the homeless. That’s why you keep seeing the same people over and over—they just come back to Malibu the next day.”
He explained that while deputies take homeless individuals to mental health facilities, those places “can only hold someone for 72 hours.”
“We’ll never enforce our way out of homelessness. We need to fix the underlying problems,” Royal stressed.
Some residents asked why the homeless aren’t taken to homeless shelters—the shelters in LA and Santa Monica are currently full with waiting lists. The county does not have plans to build more shelters because it wants to invest in permanent housing.
Another resident pointed out that the rehabs in Malibu making so much money should be offering to help homeless individuals with substance abuse problems.
As to when the now-vacant county courthouse will start serving homeless dinners, Susan Ng of LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s office said it will be about a month.
Dueñas explained that the plan coordinates the many efforts to help the homeless that are already happening in Malibu, including the faith community, CART, The People Concern, the Malibu Task Force on Homelessness, Pepperdine University, the Malibu Community Labor Exchange and other partners.