I have been a West Culver City business and property owner for 30 years.
Regarding the Upward Bound Homeless Shelter Proposal for the Sun Bay Motel on Beethoven Street and Washington Boulevard in West Culver City, there are pertinent elements I feel need to be considered:
In spite of their best intentions, how can Upward Bound assure us they will be able to place the prospective tenants in permanent housing in a span of 90 days?
Even if they succeed in that, won’t it just create a revolving door of new homeless people every three months, for as long as that program exists?
A continuously distressed, temporary population?
There is a huge backlog of available housing/Section 8 applicants.
After placement, will the children continue to attend Culver City schools?
If not, how is it beneficial for the children to be in a school system for less than 90 days?
How will they get to school?
Who will take them?
The local area schools are not Culver City schools. Permits to attend them must be obtained prior to the beginning of the school year.
As there are no cooking facilities planned, how can they possibly handle bringing in all of the meals for all of the residents every day, three times a day (and clean-up afterward)?
What happens when babies or younger children need bottles?
Off-time feedings?
What about the abusive spouses/boyfriends they have escaped? What happens when they find out their location?
How many times has that problem occurred in the Santa Monica facility? Why do they keep comparing this proposed shelter to the Santa Monica facility?
The only common element is the homeless people themselves. The program, the facility and the location are completely different.
The Santa Monica facility is a brand new 22-unit (one-bedroom) apartment building on a side street (11th Street) in an affluent part of Santa Monica (between Wilshire and Montana), not a rundown motel on a seedy commercial corridor in West Culver City that has been promised rehabilitation for the past seven years. There is no comparison.
Is it fair to ask a neighborhood that already has a number of facilities aimed at a low income and/or socially dysfunctional population to absorb more of the same?
Wade Street and its immediate vicinity have a nexus of
1) The Marina Center AA meeting hall,
2) A 99-Cent Store that attracts a lot of low income out-of-area clientele
3) A parolee-staffed work-furlough telemarketing boiler room (SW corner Washington Boulevard and McConnell) all within two blocks. Wade Street and its public park (Culver West Alexander Park) have had three murders in the last four years, one just last month.
To add additional temporary residents who are totally unfamiliar with the area to an already over-populated, over-used public park is a recipe for disaster.
We are more than willing to encourage a diverse population — ethnically, socially and economically.
But we already have more than enough lower income residents or those in some degree of social distress. Crime is obviously a continuing problem.
Lastly, where are all the neighborhood “enhancements” we were promised for at least the last seven years?
After all of the seminars, workshops, discussion meetings, has anything actually been improved?
No. It has gone noticeably downhill.
The commercial strip that runs through this neighborhood now is in worse shape than when we started talking about improvements. We were promised a “Larchmont Village.” But what we actually got were a 99-Cent Store and two vacant lots!
And now a homeless shelter?
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Well, my friends, so is the road to West Washington Boulevard.