A homeless advocate on Wednesday, Nov. 18, told the audience at a town hall meeting that she would ask the Seal Beach City Council to change the Zoning Code to allow people under age 65 to stay in a residential care facility.
Pastor Shirley Broussard, president and CEO of the SWARM Group and Associates, Inc., first publicly proposed creating a homeless shelter at a recent council meeting.
Last week, she spoke to a small gathering of people at the Marina Community Center on Marina Drive. Broussard unveiled her plan to open a residential care facility for the homeless in Seal Beach.
No one reacted to that part of her proposal. Six people in the audience did comment or ask questions. The responses fell into two distinct groups: people who thought a homeless shelter would attract the homeless to Seal Beach and those who thought the plan needed more development.
Broussard said Hospitality House would get people off the street, away from business centers, and provide a place to determine what their needs were and to find a way to get those needs met.
At 6:14 p.m., about a minute before the meeting was scheduled to start, there were no more than 24 people in the community center. That head count did not include Broussard. It may have included some volunteers who helped set up a screen, a projector, and lay out food. At height of the meeting, at 7:33 p.m., there were 38 people present. Some people left and others came during the program. Few of those in attendance touched the cookies, fresh water or coffee. Many chairs were empty.
Broussard said she had been told that Seal Beach law allows a residential care facility in any part of Seal Beach from Ocean Avenue to the unincorporated community of Rossmoor—provided the residents are 65 years old or older. Broussard said she would ask the City Council to lower the age limit. She did not say when she would begin doing this.
Broussard started by discussing her own background. According to Broussard, she left a $50,000 a year job as a mediator with the state of California because God told her to work with the homeless.
She also said she would minister to and feed the homeless even before she has a site for the Hospitality House.
She wanted the audience to know she was committed. “I have no other reason to live than to do this work,” she said.
“Yes, there are churches here, but they have other assignments,” Broussard said.
During a slide presentation to the audience, Broussard indicated she had her eye on an 8th Street property with an asking price of $1,099,000, a market value of $950,000 to $1.1 million and closing costs of $28,5000 to $33,000.
Broussard said people should be appalled, rather than used to the fact the homeless are living in our streets.
Later, she put it more bluntly: “We have an animal shelter, for God’s sake!”
During her presentation, Broussard spoke about finding a woman who was sleeping under the Seal Beach Pier. She said the woman had a check for more than $18,000 in her purse. Broussard said that woman now had a place to stay.
She stopped to applause that achievement. For a moment or two, there was silence. Then some people in the audience responded with a smattering of applause.
At 7:50 p.m., Broussard said she was almost ready to take questions. The meeting was originally scheduled from 6:15 to 8:15 p.m.
The first question Broussard heard was about her budget. Broussard said the budget was zero. She said she had never used her non-profit organization, SWARM, to raise money. According to a recent fictitious business name statement she filed with the County Clerk’s Office, Broussard’s non-profit corporation was formed in 2005.
Several times, Pastor Broussard spoke about God. She cited the Book of Proverbs several times and said the American legal system was based on the legal system described in the Old Testament Book of Judges.
A young man wearing an adhesive name tag that identified him as “Ryan” asked her to leave religion out of it. He said he was also a believer and believed in her cause, but wanted to know how she would get the work accomplished. He called her discussion of a facility premature and said he would rather focus his efforts somewhere else.
A woman who introduced herself only by her first name, which was Laura, made it clear she did not support Broussard’s cause. She said her parents were murdered by a homeless man who chose not to work. She expressed concern that Broussard’s shelter would attract a criminal element to her community.
In response to suggestions her shelter would attract the homeless, Broussard said they were already here. Earlier in the evening, she said a woman pushed her shopping cart from Los Angeles to Seal Beach.
Broussard also said you could not kick the homeless out of Seal Beach—they would simply come back.
In response to several questions about where she would get funding, Broussard said the resourses were in Seal Beach.
She also said she had been told by city staff that there was federal funding available for a shelter. She did not say if she had applied for those funds or when she would apply.
