A group of residents and business owners in a tony California beach enclave that’s been overrun by homeless junkies is paying to ship local vagrants out of town — and claims both sides are thrilled.
Sidewalks in the chic’’ Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica have become riddled with tents while bums ransack its shops and boutiques and shoot up in the parks in broad daylight.
An official state of emergency and tens of millions in taxpayer dollars have done little to help get them off the streets.
So the local Santa Monica Coalition said, why not just help them leave?
“We find that many homeless don’t actually want to be here. They don’t like the danger they’re in, but they feel trapped,” said area property manager John Alle.
Alle spearheaded a program that now gives free bus and plane tickets to the homeless to help them escape their sunny, beachside world of crime and misery.
The program, which launched last month, has already had hundreds of calls from people as eager to leave Santa Monica as the locals are see them gone, organizers said.
“One woman we helped, she’s finally home. She’s with her aunt, who is older and needs help. They want to be together,” Alle said of a lady who the program helped fly to Georgia last week.
Six people have been reunited with their families so far.
“Man, I would love to get the f–k out of here,” too, a homeless man who goes by DeBlau recently admitted to The Post.
He spoke from a park across from Santa Monica City Hall that has become what Alle called a “de facto homeless shelter” — a place the city has surrendered to vagrants to keep them contained.
Deblau, 29, said he came to California from New York with his mother, but he’s spent his adult life on the streets.
As he spoke, a fight broke out across the park, with one of the combatants pulling a knife.
Deblau said he has been stabbed himself, and he’s been robbed and beaten up more times than he can remember.
“I’ve considered [hitchhiking away]. But man, it’s dangerous. I don’t know what would happen,” he said.
“If somebody can help me get out of here, sign me the f–k up.”
The criteria for a free ticket to ride are somewhat strict: Applicants have to be from out of state, they can’t be on drugs, and they must have family waiting for them back home.
Homelessness has exploded in the LA area since the pandemic, and Santa Monica is no exception: It declared a Local Emergency on Homelessness in 2022 and has since sunk tens of millions of dollars into public and Non-Governmental Organization-run programs.
Alle and his allies believe such efforts have only made things worse, funneling taxpayer dollars into ill-conceived housing that sits empty or NGO programs that hand out drug needles and crack pipes.
The city — hailed by US News’ Travel as a “chic’’ haven featuring a “gorgeous’’ beach and “highly regarded restaurants’’ — has also resisted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent incentives for cities to ban camping on the streets, claiming it has things under control.
But nothing about the situation is “under control,” a local company owner said.
“A lot of businesses are closing early because the staff are afraid to leave at night,’’ said the owner, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
“You don’t even know what’s waiting for you out the front door.’’
The owner has a shop on the Third Street Promenade, a posh pedestrian mall currently speckled with empty storefronts, panhandlers and graffiti.
Several businesses told The Post they experience broad-daylight thefts several times a week and that people wander in and scream at or expose themselves to employees, many of them teenagers.
Alle — who owns buildings on the Promenade — said he himself was jumped by a vagrant and beaten to within an inch of his life two years ago, causing permanent neurological damage and chronic pain.
“We feel we can handle a small percentage of the homeless problem, at least. And maybe this [program] will grow, and the city will get on our side,” Alle said.
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