Need for charities won’t fade

Typically, a city’s annual doling out of federal grant money ranks among the many ho-hum city council moments. The nonprofits seeking the money may get excited or agitated, but often the dollars are few and the debate about who gets what is far from entertaining or substantive.

Of course, right now there isn’t much “typical” to Costa Mesa City Council meetings, which have been the scene of protests, arrests and shouting matches for the past month. And so this year’s handing out of the federal money -- known as community development block grants -- is poised to turn into another battle over immigration and which direction the city is headed.

In the simplest terms, the battle is between the people who run the nonprofits and those who for years have talked about the nonprofits, charities in particular, being “magnets” for poorer people and those they suspect to be in this country illegally.

Among the latter group is Mayor Allan Mansoor, who also kicked off the debate on immigration by proposing that the city’s police enforce federal immigration laws. When running for office four years ago, he pledged to do away with public funding of the city’s charities. Judging by the decline in the number of applicants over the past few years, from about 60 to about 30, it would appear that Mansoor is filling this campaign promise -- whether on purpose or by happenstance.

Either way, while we assume that those wanting to see the charities gone from Costa Mesa are ecstatic that the number of applicants for the money is dropping, it is no great victory. The need for these charities is not declining. What’s changed is that the charities are unwilling to go through the scrutiny -- overt and at times punishing, applicants say -- to request the money.

“We have decided not to go after the funding primarily because we are not happy with the process that organizations are put through to request the funding,” Veronica Escobedo, program director for Girls Inc., told the Pilot.

Trevor Murphy, who runs Save Our Youth on the Westside, was even more blunt.

“I believe the goal is to eradicate any provider of free social services -- it doesn’t matter what,” he told the Pilot.

Opponents of the charities, of course, will argue that it is not government’s place to fund such services and that the charities should be willing to open their books and their activities to scrutiny. But that scrutiny should be reasonable and the process fair.

Judging by the reactions of those who run the charities, it sounds as though the process, which runs through Costa Mesa’s residential redevelopment and rehabilitation committee, has ceased being fair. The goal, it seems, is to discourage charities from seeking government aid. Beyond that, it would seem the goal is to encourage the charities to find a new home.

But doing so isn’t going to end the need for the nonprofits. The issues in Costa Mesa involving recent and not-so-recent immigrants, day laborers, poor-performing schools and others are not easily solved. Rather than being focused on finding an all-too-easy solution, the residential redevelopment and rehabilitation committee ought to be seeking real, substantive and long-term solutions to city troubles.