Six Fixes for Homelessness in Santa Monica, Sourced

What is the plan?

The plan is six initiatives that get people too sick to help themselves off the street and into treatment, and that make the City publish what its homelessness dollars deliver. Together they ask for a clinician who can write a hold on every outreach team, a guaranteed bed at the end of every hold, a 24/7 crisis drop-off on the Westside, a written offer-first standard before any enforcement, every homelessness contract published with its results, priority response around schools and parks, and one City desk for families.

Who is this plan for?

The plan is for five different groups of people, because one answer does not fit everyone on the street. Treating them all the same is how a city ends up helping no one.

Humane does not mean leaving a sick person on the sidewalk until they die there. It means the right help for each group, and the same rules for everyone.

1. Treatment, not tents

When someone is too sick or too addicted to choose help, the law already lets an officer, a clinician, a family member or a judge act without their signature. Use it. Put someone on every outreach team who can write a hold, since Jan 1, 2026 for severe addiction too, and guarantee a bed at the end of every one. After three contacts, file. It's the same second chance drug court gives people every day: get clean instead of doing time.

Serves group 1: people too sick to choose help. See also jail or help.

Every door has a time limit, a lawyer or advocate, and a judge. The person keeps their rights.

Read the full initiative: Treatment, not tents

2. Offer first. Then enforce.

Every contact starts with a real bed, the same day. Too sick to choose? The team uses the hold, the petition or the court, not a clipboard and a water bottle. Able to choose and turn it down? The rules already on the books apply. Camping on our sidewalks is against the law. Enforcing it, with help offered first, keeps everyone safe, including the person on the sidewalk. And every month, the numbers go public.

Serves group 2: people able to choose who turn help down.

Read the full initiative: Offer a bed first, then enforce

3. A place to go, and a way up

A 24/7 drop-off where police and outreach can hand someone off in minutes, on a hold or on their own, connected to a recovery campus. Stabilize. Get clean. Rebuild. Come home. People move up as they hit milestones: more freedom, then housing, then work. Slip, and you go back one step, not to the street. Graduates get paid work bringing the next person in.

Serves groups 1 and 4: a place to take someone in crisis tonight, and a way back for people who are ready.

Read the full initiative: A 24/7 Westside crisis drop-off

4. Open books

Every homelessness dollar, every contract and every result, published every month. Every person with a caseworker and a plan. Totals, never names.

Serves every group, and every taxpayer: it shows which programs actually move people off the street, including what each hotel and motel room buys.

Read the full initiative: Open the books on homelessness spending

5. Safe blocks for kids and families

Priority response on the blocks around every school and park, and parks full of life after dark.

Serves everyone, group 5 included: clear park rules about conduct, applied the same to all.

Read the full initiative: Safe blocks near schools and parks

6. Bring them home

One desk that files with families: the petition, the request, the report. A lawful way to learn they're safe that doesn't wait for a signature the person is too sick to give. And real tickets home with family waiting at the other end.

Serves group 3: people with family who want them home.

Read the full initiative: Bring them home

Who is behind the plan?

Santa Monica residents, working as volunteers. Empower Santa Monica is not the City of Santa Monica. Nobody is paid, it takes no donations, runs no ads and backs no party, candidate or company. The plan, the Santa Monica Street Blueprint, is published with every source under a Creative Commons license.

"When a bed is offered the same day and turned down, the rules already on the books should apply, every time, and the numbers should be public every month. No bed, no enforcement. A bed first, then the law."
A founding member of Empower Santa Monica

What does it cost?

Most of the plan runs on laws, staff and dollars that already exist. The hold standard changed on Jan. 1, 2026 under SB 43 at no cost to the City. Santa Monica's share of the County's Measure A Local Solutions Fund for FY26-27 is $1,296,779. In 2023 the City secured $1.5 million in federal and $1.5 million in state funding toward a Santa Monica Behavioral Health Center meant as a 24/7 destination for first responders. LA County's 2026-29 Behavioral Health Services Act plan lists law enforcement drop-off as a crisis service.

New money is needed mainly for guaranteed bed-nights. One benchmark: Irvine buys as-available shelter beds from Costa Mesa at $163 a bed-night (2026). Open books costs almost nothing: the City already has the numbers.

Where does the plan stand?

Every initiative is a resident draft. Nothing has been submitted to the City Council and nothing is on an agenda. Each initiative goes to Council when a councilmember sponsors it, and members plan to ask for a sponsor after the Nov. 3, 2026 election. Every step will be posted on the site.

How can I help?

• Take the two-minute neighbor survey. The answers shape what we take to Council.
• Add your name behind the six initiatives.
• Learn how to speak at Council or write in.
• Print the flyer for a café or building lobby, or send a friend the press brief.
• Questions or press: hello@empowersantamonica.com.