The City of Santa Monica has a robust set of services to help its homeless residents find services and while those programs were successful for many years a changing demographic among homeless individuals is challenging the established approach.

Officials including law enforcement officers, social service providers and civic leaders are now rethinking the City’s approach to homelessness and searching for ways to maintain successful programs while tackling problems associated with changing demographics in the homeless population.

At a recent meeting for DTSM merchants, Brian Hardgrave and Margaret Willis (both with Santa Monica’s Human Services Division) said the approach so far has been to funnel significant resources into the most at risk or troublesome individuals. The approach has successfully brought some chronically homeless individuals in from the streets but the programs can only serve a relatively small number of individuals at a time.

Read More: http://smdp.com/challenges-abound-for-serving-new-wave-of-homeless-individuals/162697