Malls all over Southern California are Thriving. Here Are The Two Reasons the Promenade is Struggling

Dear Council,

I don't often share John Alle's videos. I find him directionally right, but I think he is tactically wrong-I've argued with him about his signs on the promenade which are often unnecessarily personal and seem counterproductive. His scope is too narrow, (we are more than our disorder), and occasionally he drifts into hyperbole.

But I absolutely understand his frustration in the face of a seemingly indifferent bureaucracy that seems more intent on gaslighting our reality than solving our problems. And his daily misery videos are absolutely what I see in my neighborhood every day. They are not a lie: it is not possible to walk my dog around the block without encountering a dangerously unstable person. Simply not possible.

I'm sharing this one because it is a restaurant owner voicing her frustration with the disorder of downtown, and its impact on her business. This gets to the heart of the problem: the disorder itself is a repellent. You don't have to be attacked by a pipe (as I was), to feel unsafe walking around. Last week it was a 70-year-old woman who punched by a transient on the promenade. People will NOT put up with that-they will simply go elsewhere, despite our ability to float on the charms of our beach and pier. Nor will they put up with defecation, urine on the streets, mini one-person encampments tucked into alleys, and pubic intoxication all over downtown. The parade of zombies makes them feel unsafe. And John is right: it isn't safe.

There is no amount of policing that can handle this alone, although a lot can be done with an aggressive broken windows approach for public intoxication and use of hard drugs. These often lead to finding warrants which are a way to eject people from our city. But this takes more police, and ultimately, there is no way for our services to handle the tsunami of need that washes up our shores.

When I proposed a state of emergency a few years ago, I was hoping for a partnership with LA County that would stem the flow. I was hoping for more money for mental health teams paired with police aggressively addressing disorder and need in our streets. What I have heard instead is the fiction that this is a housing problem, which is convenient for a pro-development council that sees Santa Monica as the next Vancouver, and kicks the disorder can down the road.

But no amount of ugly stack-and-packs built will help, because it's not a housing problem. It's not a "recovery" problem after Covid, or the new scapegoat: the Palisades fires. THAT IS A TOTAL MISDIRECTION. Malls all over Southern California are thriving. There are two reasons the promenade is struggling: our international brand was destroyed by images of looters and rioters tearing up downtown with zero response from the city. And our current reputation now of a dirty, unsafe, and unstable place where anything can happen at any time.

The real root causes are the train and the shelter that are a never ending pipeline of addiction and mental illness mainlined right into downtown Santa Monica. Without addressing the train and the shelter as importers of disorder, nothing will change. Ever.

New York City recently started enforcing fare regulations, which is helping them turn the tide on the "public transportation as a moveable insane asylum" problem. We should insist on the same and back it up by threatening a curfew on the train. The shelter downtown should be moved or shut down. The money we save on that outdoor drug market should be put toward the police and care team combos that aggressively address the need as the train disembarks. What we don't need is more drunk and disorderly scenes from the non-homeless boozers that will be drawn to a free-for-all if the main "entertainment" is alcohol, as seen this past Easter.

Show me that you are serious people that can see this reality clearly, because I'm not seeing it. And so I understand John Alle's exasperation. The downtown is drowning in disorder that can only be stopped by addressing the source: the train and the shelter.

In airplanes they say you should put your mask on first before helping others. The same is true for cities. We need to save our city from the chaos, the brand destruction, and financial ruin of lost tax revenues from a sad and underperforming business and tourism district.

Arthur Jeon