City Explores Using Transportation Funds to Relocate Homeless Center

By Jorge Casuso

Monday, August 2--The City of Santa Monica is quietly exploring an unusual plan to use transportation funds to purchase an art store near a residential neighborhood in an effort to relocate the city's largest homeless services center, the Lookout has learned.

Top city officials declined to discuss the plan to relocate the Ocean Park Community Center's drop-in center and the Daybreak residential program, which houses 14 mentally ill homeless women, to the building occupied by Mittel's Art & Frame Center at Ninth and Broadway. But the plan was recently discussed in closed session.

"We would like to be able to talk about it but we can't," said Judy Rambeau, the city's public information officer. "There are some legal issues that have arisen in the last couple of days."

OPCC officials said the social services agency must move out of the city-owned building it leases at 1616 7th St. by June of next year to make way for the expansion of the city's bus yards. They acknowledged the plan will require educating neighbors and restructuring the drop-in program, which serves about 130 homeless clients a day, most of them single men.

"It's going to be a lot of work for us," said OPCC acting executive director Melba Culpepper. "Our job will be to see if it is feasible and what impact we'll have on the neighbors. We're going to have to deal with nimbyism. People are not going to welcome us in.

"There's a stereotype of who accesses the drop in center," Culpepper said. "It's a lot of people coming and going, and I know that's an issue. We'll have to address the flow of services and the hours of operation. We're going to need more security."

Under the plan, the building at 828 Broadway would be bought using approximately $3 million in state transportation funds. The funds - earmarked during discussions with state transportation and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials -- can be used to relocate social service agencies displaced as the result of transit expansion, said transportation director John Catoe.

"This has been a win win for everybody," Catoe said. "The funds are still there, we have a building and we're servicing a social need in our community. After an extensive search and discussions with MTA, we found that we could purchase the building and move them to that building."

OPCC is one of three several social service agencies - including the Legal Aid Society and the Ocean Park Food Bank - currently housed in the city owned building near 7th Street and Colorado Ave.

The building is slated to be used to expand the transportation department's outdated maintenance building, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. An alternate fuel station also will be built to service a new fleet of buses.

The department had the option of housing the displaced social service centers in its new facility, but decided the uses were incompatible.

"With OPCC, given the nature of the types of activities they have, we needed to find a place for them," Catoe said.

The building at Ninth and Broadway is a strategic location because it is near the beach, where many of OPCC's homeless clients live Culpepper said.

"You can't move us deep into Santa Monica," Culpepper said. "Most of our clients reside near the beach. We'd like to stay four to five blocks from where we are."

The building - which would revert back to transportation-related uses if OPCC moves out - also is a strategic location for future transportation uses because it is near the transportation mall slated to be built on Broadway downtown, Catoe said.

The plan to relocate OPCC continues a long and close partnership between the 30-year-old social service agency and the city.

"We can't afford to do this on our own," Culpepper said. "Affordability is a big issue. Entertainment is moving into Santa Monica and hiking up the cost. The city as a whole has been 100 percent supportive."