Shift your location just a few streets down and you could rile the neighbors. The nonprofit Common Ground has learned this lesson after its recent move from its old home at 2021 Lincoln Boulevard to 2401 Lincoln Boulevard. More than 70 residents of the Sunset Park neighborhood came to a community meeting this week at Olympic High School to complain about the nonprofit’s relocation.

Common Ground calls itself “the only comprehensive HIV agency serving the west side of Los Angeles.” Its website boasts about providing free HIV testing, needle exchanges (code for drug addict attraction) and “other services.” The website also features several pictures of people who appear to be homeless or junkies—or both.

The residents of Sunset Park fear that the new neighbor will bring crime, harassment and other undesirable features to the community. People who have been near the previous location say they faced intimidation and various other scary scenarios from the people who hang out there. It had become more than just an HIV help center, it had become a drug addict/criminal magnet.

“I cannot imagine the city in its right mind allowing such a relocation in such close proximity to family residential homes,” wrote Sunset Park resident Tebb Kusserow in a letter to the media. “There is enough going on in the outside world for good, young parents to deal with without this. The end result will be that homes will no longer sell, and thus become rentals ... and that doesn't do much for your family community.”

He added, “If the question is where might the relocation take place ... my suggestion is somewhere close to the police department and/or city hall and/or a public medical facility ... all for obvious reasons. But certainly not in a residential, family community near schools.”

Most of the Sunset Park residents say they are OK with what the organization does, and there is a place for it in Santa Monica, just not near their homes. This brings up an interesting problem. Feel-good types like to support these kinds of organizations, but they don’t want to have anything to do with them other than maybe write a check for a tax-write off once a year.

Most of the organizations that “help” the members of society who we like to ignore, but claim that we care about, are located in poor neighborhoods. The idea is that the poor people will not have the means to fight them off. You’re never going to see a homeless shelter in Bel Aire. Luxury rehab centers can be found all over Malibu, but ones that cater to homeless people aren’t there. Those can be found in Santa Monica on Pico Boulevard, where the home prices are lower.

Common Ground’s move has happened, and there is almost nothing the city can do about it. As long as Common Ground and its clients behave themselves, they cannot be forced to move. However, the city does have a weapon. Nearly 10 percent of Common Ground’s budget ($90,000) is money from the city. So although the city cannot force the organization to move, it can make life hard for it. City officials have promised to look closely at what goes on in this situation, and could pull funding if that is needed (or at least threaten to do it; they probably never would actually do it).

The city of Santa Monica has an extremely bloated budget. It became even larger with the recent passage of an ill-conceived sales tax. Most of the money is being spent on staff salaries and unimaginable pensions that nobody should be getting. Then a whole bunch of other money is spent on various social programs (most of which don’t help the people of Santa Monica, but rather the “visitors"), like Common Ground.

Whether city money should be spent on homeless people getting HIV tests and new needles for their drug use is a matter of opinion. One could argue that the money could be spent on better things, especially since many of these people are not Santa Monica residents. This is not to say these people should be left to die. But, one could argue this is a federal, state or county government problem, not one that should be left to a city.