LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Community Call

We write to you as fellow citizens concerned about the quality of life for all in our local communities.

Our principal goal has been to raise awareness and introduce measures of accountability for an issue that the public is largely unaware of: the questionable competence and caliber of homeless services offered by OPCC, the nonprofit agency that the Palisades’ community has contracted out to assist with the local issue of homelessness.

Visit the OPCC website and you will see its noble mission statement. One would be hard pressed to conclude OPCC does not provide needed services to the Santa Monica, LA and Palisades communities.

However, in its internal operations, too often there is a gap between policy and practice. Upon entering OPCC’s transitional housing facility, most individuals familiar with Santa Monica’s culture and values expect to be entering a progressive, well-informed, harm-reductive, client-centered system of care. However, not long after walking through the doors, many enter a state of shock and disbelief.

We are aware that what we discuss below will likely be difficult or uncomfortable for many readers to digest. But when the truth and critical contextual details are intentionally hidden from the stakeholders, taxpayers and contracting entities, the only solution is bring it out into the light. We have spoken in front of the Santa Monica City Council, to several authoritative bodies and public officials about these issues.

Any reasonable, rational, fair-minded citizen would see the current status quo as unacceptable.

Some examples include the following:

• Clients in residential facilities are too often physically or sexually assaulted, as staff is neither interested in nor adequately trained in crisis intervention; and residents complain of no operative cameras inside and at the entrances of residential facilities.
• Non-functioning grievance procedures: whitewashing, throwing out, altering of credible client grievances and official records is routine, as is gaslighting and brazen lying about the events that led to them.
• The staff is untrained about and hostile to reasonable accommodation requests. For example, a wheelchair-bound client asking for his bed to be lowered so that he can climb into bed had to sleep in his wheelchair for months because of the program director’s inaction.
• Temporary and permanent eviction of disabled people into the streets, without due process in violation of fair housing and ADA reasonable accommodation laws is the norm.

The power differential left in the hands of untrained and inadequately supervised staff has led to a culture of intimidation, retaliation and disability discrimination. Various forms of emotional abuse are employed to exert social control rather than provide social services.

The threats used by the staff are so effective, the general public has heard nothing of this internal culture. The unhoused community is extremely aware of these abuses and tends to be resistant to obtaining “services” for that very reason.

Unfortunately, any official oversight that does exist, itself needs credible oversight. It is largely kangaroo oversight.

A senior attorney at Legal Aid has recently confirmed that their office has received these sorts of complaints about OPCC over the years and has expressed an interest in pursuing reform.

We urge the forward-thinking Pacific Palisades community to support the establishment of a countywide ordinance to assure operating standards for homeless services providers, like the one functioning in San Francisco. As an integral part of this effort we seek your support to create a temporary housing and shelter monitoring committee.

Speaking for all citizens of conscience, we believe that the degrading, dehumanizing and discriminatory treatment of too many OPCC clients—most of whom have disabilities—must end immediately.

Micheal Louis | Olga Zurawska