A Santa Monica business owner has launched a grassroots initiative to address California’s growing homelessness crisis, stepping in where he says city and Los Angeles County leaders have failed to act.

Roughly three weeks ago, Santa Monica property owner John Alle and fellow business owners in the southern California city hatched a plan to help reduce homelessness on their streets, through a targeted and voluntary family reunification program. Their goal is to assist individuals who have been homeless for less than a year and are actively seeking help, by reuniting them with loved ones in their hometowns — where they’re more likely to get the support they need to succeed.

Through the nonprofit Alle co-founded, the Santa Monica Coalition, a small group of local donors personally fund travel expenses for these trips. They’ve also implemented an AI-powered hotline to efficiently handle the flood of incoming requests.

Since the program’s launch in June, the hotline has received over 500 calls, and they’ve completed the reunification process for eight people so far, according to Alle.

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“I think it’s a scalable solution that’ll work over and over because there’s motivation,” Alle told Fox News Digital. “And this is valuable as an asset when cities and counties are desperate for fixes right now and spending way too much with no results and missing funds.”

Alle shared videos of two people boarding trains and planes to their homes in Pennsylvania and Wyoming this week through the program. They talked about feeling unsafe living in California and wanting to reunite with their families.

Alle hopes to eventually transition the project to a nonprofit organization that is equally committed to the reunification model. He believes the simple strategy is going to have a bigger impact than “housing and other expensive, frankly, go-nowhere methods that are being tried and have been tried over the last three or four years” by the local government.

“The homelessness and the crime is increasing at the same rate as the increase in funding. And that’s not a good sign. It shows it’s not working,” he said.

Alle said the program isn’t intended to help everyone, but it is one step in the right direction.

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“There’s different levels of homelessness,” Alle said. “There’s mentally ill people who need drastic help, institutional help, that we’re not equipped to help. And there are drug addicts, alcohol addicted, that need help with special programs. Our program is focused on those that have been here for less than a year, and they’re motivated. They’re contacting us.”

Participation in the program is open to anyone who meets a few key criteria. Candidates must have identification to travel through the airport, and a family member or friend must commit to receiving them upon arrival. Alle’s team personally verifies these arrangements with family beforehand to confirm their willingness and capability. Each participant must also sign a waiver agreeing that they are going along with the program of their own accord.

Alle says the county and city’s solutions aren’t helping the situation and have made the tourist destination a hotbed for violent crime and homelessness.

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“Our city has been taken over by the mentally ill and addicted who desperately need help,” the Santa Monica Coalition says in a flyer on their website telling people to stay away from the city. “Sadly, many of them refuse shelter and services. The City Manager and City Leaders hide behind policy adoptions and limitations as their reasoning for not taking action towards resolving the human catastrophe at hand. Meanwhile, their lack of political will makes for everyone’s loss.”

Santa Monica residents and business owners who make up the nonprofit are calling on city leaders to take action on the city’s rising crime and homelessness. 

“We’re really trying to push our city leaders, who have been ignoring the depravity on the streets, the crime, the theft, the homelessness that’s not being addressed,” Alle told Fox News Digital. 

The coalition filed a lawsuit against the LA County Public Health Department, its director, Barbara Ferrer and the Venice Family Clinic, last year over the county’s needle distribution program to the homeless. Clean needles are handed out as part of the county’s “harm reduction” effort, which also includes the overdose-reversal drug Naloxone.

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The LA County Health Department released a statement in 2024 defending the harm-reduction efforts, saying they are “well demonstrated to reduce overdose deaths, reduce the public use of injectable drugs, reduce transmission of communicable diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis), increase access to substance use services, reduce the use of emergency medical services, and increase public safety.”

Gangs are also a huge problem for business owners and residents’ safety, Alle says. He shared photos of his properties vandalized by MS-13 and other cartels as recently as last week. But he says city officials have turned a blind eye to the problems plaguing Santa Monica.

“It’s gotten out of control,” Alle described the situation. “We’ve got cartels — MS-13 and the 18th street gang, very active in that area. We have crews every day painting up their tagging because if we don’t paint it over the next day, it becomes a competition and a source of friction among the other cartels over who controls the area.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health told Fox News Digital that a proposed judgment had been entered in favor of LA County and Ferrer last month in LA County Superior Court regarding the needle distribution lawsuit filed by Alle and the Santa Monica Coalition against county officials. 

The Santa Monica City Council told Fox News Digital it already has a reunification program that it started in 2006.

“The city of Santa Monica has a longstanding reunification program administered by our Homelessness Prevention & Intervention (HPI) Division called Project Homecoming. Project Homecoming was launched in 2006 and has reunited over 3200 individuals who are experiencing homelessness within the city of Santa Monica with family and friends living elsewhere. Individuals are identified by our trusted and professional partners who perform outreach within the city of Santa Monica on a daily basis,” a spokesperson for the city said.