Side by Side, a community partnership

Side by Side has been meeting since 1994. 

(SxS) is a meeting place for housed people to meet with homeless people to devise community solutions with people on the streets. 

We are the first group to organize “Coastal and Community Clean-Ups” cleaning the Third Street Promenade, the beaches, and Santa Monica City Hall.  We’ve challenged the Santa Monica Police Department and City Council to softball games, “Play Ball with City Hall”.  We’ve held “The Gingerbread Housing Project” and a variety of picnics and social events.  We also campaigned for “Brown Bag Justice” and “If You Don’t Have a Home... You Don’t Have an Emergency”. 
These events bring housed and homeless people together as equals, and this mixture has culminated in City projects such as S.A.M.O.S.H.E.L. and S.W.A.S.H.L.O.C.K.

SxS in coalition with all our volunteers maintains a Speaker’s Bureau, we provide speakers to classrooms of all ages or to groups who wish to discuss homelessness, community gardening and solutions to poverty. Side By Side is a round table where mostly homeless but occasionally non-homeless people discuss issues and share information.  You can join the national speaker’s bureau or request speakers on a national basis through the National Coalition on Homelessness NCH - Speakers' Bureau Panels Around the USA.  For speaker’s locally contact the email addresses at the bottom of this page. 

Side By Side meets on alternate Thursdays (1st, 3rd and 5th) 2-3 times a month in Santa Monica at the City’s Ken Edwards Center. I’ve been a member for the last 10 years.  Non-homeless people are always welcome to our frank discussions.  For non-homeless people it opens their eyes to the personal suffering and injustices our homeless neighbors confront daily.  Until last year, SxS used to be regularly attended by a City Homeless Services representative from Human Services. WHY ARE THEY NO LONGER COMING? Over time, SxS has worked with Human Services to get disabled homeless citizens into permanent housing and other aid programs. 

The City does have many compassionate programs for families as well as disabled and or chronic homeless individuals.  But every night the City’s 460 beds are full.  Still hundreds of people have to sleep on the ground every night.  The City has been trying hard to sweep people out of town by enforcing, in essence, anti-homeless laws such as lying down illegally (i.e. sleeping in public), washing in a restroom, sitting down too long in public, smoking in the wrong place, leaving your bag outside a store that won’t allow you to come in with your bag, etc.  Swept up by police, people have been jailed for 6-8 hours and then let loose with no charges.  Even if every homeless infraction is ultimately dismissed in Court it is still a crime to be homeless without a shelter bed in Santa Monica.

In January and again in May of 2009 SxS held two public demonstrations in front of City Hall to protest the lack of safe beds and the criminalization of homeless people.  Then in June the ACLU filed a suit against Santa Monica claiming they were enforcing unjust anti-homeless laws.  ACLU attorneys began coming to the afternoon H.O.P.E. meal gatherings on the sidewalk in front of OPCC, one of the city-funded homeless access center, looking for victims.  ACLU staff attorney David Sapp attended several Side By Side meetings and listened and took notes as people described their experiences and shared their information about others they knew who were victimized. 

In July of 2010, for as still an unknown reason, the City and the ACLU agreed to drop the suit.  In dropping the suit the City said it didn’t have to change any of its anti-homeless laws.  The ACLU proclaimed they forced the City to back off treating homeless people as illegal. The suit has brought international attention to Santa Monica.  Side by Side is a credible watch dog with a 16 year history.  Come to a meeting.  Contact us.  Get Involved.

E-mail  rwshelters[at]verizon.net  or  moira[at]hopemakingchange.org

                 or the SxS Blog - blog.hopemakingchange.org