Santa Cruz City Officials Puzzled by Reality
By KEITH MCHENRY
I was walking along River Street when I came upon two of my friends at the Armory Shelter van stop outside Garage 10. I asked them if they were staying in the Armory. “No we are in the prison camp next to it,” one said as the other nodded in agreement. I asked if they were provided tents. The tents were there when they arrived. I asked if they had canopies over them. They didn’t. “It's too hot to be in the tent,” she added noting that the van schedule almost made her miss her job. She tells me that the camp is already nearly full as is the Armory next door. I told them that several friends told me they went up to check in and left saying it was like an internment camp.
Ross Camp Hero Robert Woodlief was the first to tell me that those who went to check in at the tents outside the Armory were horrified and declined to stay. Like many of those who eat at Food Not Bombs, he lost his vehicular home to the city tow truck. He moved to the Soquel end of the ever expanding Benchlands camp.
I walked over the pedestrian bridge to take a picture of the Bull and Bear Fights plaque on the Dakota Street side of San Lorenzo Park. Wall Street stocks collapsed into the Bear Market that morning. The terms Bull and Bear Market come from the bull and bear fights popular in America at one time. The monument reminds us that Bull and Bear fights started in San Lorenzo Park in 1797 ending on July 13, 1867. The people of Santa Cruz placed bets on which would survive, the bull or the bear.
I strolled up and down Pacific Avenue taking photos of the 19 shuttered retail stores between Mission Street and Laurel. There would be another block of bankrupt shops but they were cleared for a luxury condo project.
I snapped a picture of the expanded camp Soquel side of the pedestrian bridge. “Hey don’t take pictures,” yells up a man hidden by a blue tarp. He sticks his head out, “Oh you’re Keith, that's ok.”
I turn and snap a long shot of the Water Street side of the camp. The numbers of people moving to the Benchlands is growing everyday. It's a tough situation for anyone to live on the dusty flood plains. I am amazed at the relative cooperation of people struggling with such diverse conditions and difficulties. The one thing they all share besides the challenges of survival is that they can come and go as they please. They are free and independent.
I see Blue smacking golf balls towards the Duck Pond with his driver. “I thought you moved into a place in Ben Lomond?” I ask. “The landlord kicked me out after the first night saying I wasn’t family,” adding that he still has a housing voucher. “I moved in over there.” He points to a tent in the flats. Another Benchlands resident Greg Bengston comes by and shares that the accommodations next to the Armory were so inhumane that he wasn’t willing to move up there.
Greg also explained that the water faucet in the camp had been shut down
for at least four days. “When we showed up inside the county building looking to fill our five gallon jugs the staff apparently called the city and the water was back on that afternoon.”
Greg added that he overheard city staff person Jeremy Leonard telling some of the older Benchland residents that they had to move out by the end of the month and that the police Swat Team would be clearing out the camp in July.
A community with some of the world’s wealthiest residents should be able to do better by members of their working class neighbors, many of whom have helped build Santa Cruz. I have unhoused friends like Robert who poured the concrete and nailed the frames of those very homes some of them now enjoy.
The City plans to evict several hundred people from the Benchlands camp in July. They will end up living in the doorways, woods, levees and roadsides of downtown Santa Cruz if we don’t stop them. The locations that the City plans to move people too are already occupied so there is no place for people to go. See what they have to say in their official May 5, 2022 Agenda Report.
From the Santa Cruz City Council Agenda Report,
As a result of the closure of the Cemetery and Hell’s Trail camps, the number of persons camping in the Benchlands has increased significantly compared to the beginning of the year. Earlier this year, Council provided staff direction to work toward closing the Benchlands to camping, and on April 12, the City Manager reported to Council that staff are working towards a closure in July. Staff is in the process of developing an operational plan for the closure to camping on this timeline, along with a plan for the restoration of the area to its intended use as a park that is utilized by the entire community. Several
factors critical to the success of this effort are already underway, including expansion of existing shelter capacity in the City, along with collaboration with the County to expand case management, service connections, and rehousing efforts for persons camping in the Benchlands in advance of the closure.
The May 5 Report claims they hope to provide safe sleeping spaces or cots for a total of 315 people. On April 19, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that they counted “285 tents set up along the San Lorenzo River from the Water Street bridge to the Soquel Avenue bridge.” A few dozen people were cleared from Sycamore Grove and other areas along Route 9 during the first week of June, increasing the population of the Benchlands once again. Each of the “shelters” they plan to move people to are already full so either the City will evict the current occupants into the streets to make way for those being removed from the Benchlands camp, or those in the camp will be forced to find a place to be in the streets or the Pogonip forest. It's just as simple as that, a cruel shell game. If the celluloid avatars at City Hall thought those who live outside as human they would never inflict such suffering. But they see our unhoused friends as rodents to be eradicated.
As the economy crashes the number of people being forced to live outside is sure to increase. It is clear that the city and county are not prepared to welcome hundreds of additional people who will become homeless and will be seeking a safe place to live.
The May 5 Report lists the 315 possible locations including 60 cots at the Armory, the camp next to it, and the old maintenance boneyard at 1220 River St. But these are already full, so unless they evict all those people into the streets to replace them with people from the Benchlands it's not really clear what the City is seeking to achieve. Are they trying to make 300 people’s lives even more unstable?
The local homeless industrial complex is awash in funds but little is available to house those forced on to the streets. In a May 18, article in lookout.com on the closing of the last COVID hotels Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin, claims the county will have spent $73 million on the program’s emergency shelter program. But this is just a fraction of the millions flowing into the pockets of those administering our well financed system of poverty pimps.
So here is the list of priorities they outline in the City’s May 5 agenda report. City staff positions were approved by Council on March 8, 2022.
Deputy City Manager (Budget: $????)
Homelessness Services Coordinator (Budget: $????)
Homelessness Response Outreach and Shelter Specialist (Budget: $????)
Community Service Officer (Budget: $????)
Community Relations Specialist (Budget: $111,836)
Public Works Building Maintenance Worker II (Budget: $67,094)
Public Works Homelessness Response Field Worker (Budget: $173,128)
Public Works Field Supervisor and Senior Homelessness Response Field
Worker for Homelessness Response Field Division (Budget: $212,733)
Contract with County of Santa Cruz for additional Mental
Health Liaisons (Budgeted: $188,000)
Planning & Proposal Development Consultant (Budgeted: $336,000)
Legislative Advocacy Consultant (Budgeted: $150,000, reduced from
$216,000) Land & Resource Management Contractor (Budgeted: $520,000)
Vehicle Abatement Contractor (Budgeted: $37,500)
The agenda report continues with a section on their Over Size Vehicle Ordinance Implementation, and Safe Parking Program, OVO, has this to offer:
The OVO was adopted by Council on November 9, 2021. Several key elements of the OVO include parking restrictions on City streets between midnight and 5 a.m., a new residential permit program, and the restriction of discharging sewage or greywater on streets or in storm drains.
Tier 1 Emergency Safe Parking (3 spaces total)
Tier 2 Multiple Safe Parking Sites (30 spaces total)
Tier 3 Operator Supported 24/7 Safe Parking Site (15-20 spaces total)
When you first face homelessness and have some resources families often
buy a large van, SUV or RV to move into. So Santa Cruz can anticipate a huge increase in people seeking the shelter of their vehicle and now face having their new home towed, added to the stress of sky high gas prices.
I get a frantic call from Santa Cruz Homeless Union President Alicia Kuhl on June 16. Her RV was gone. At first she thought it had been stolen. A friend had been living in it since she had finally after a three year struggle to find housing for her family. Her friend had moved from the vehicle the day before. The key is under the mat he told her. She called the police. The City of Santa Cruz towed her legal RV from a legal parking spot on Soquel.
I call the tow company. The owner of Auto Care Towing told me that her RV was seized because it was in violation of the Oversized Vehicle Ordinance (OVO) even though the City is still waiting approval from the Coastal Commission before this deadly law can be enforced.
I gave Alicia the $771 she required to retrieve her vehicle. She paid Auto Care Towing the money and when she went to drive it away she found an employee was under the RV removing the transmission and drive line. She video taped the employee as he is dismantling her vehicle. She has also called the Santa Cruz Sheriffs department to come and intervene.
Like many others she bought this RV when the county red tagged the apartment she was renting and had to move in haste. This policy of official theft could force many more just evicted members of our community into tents on the Benchlands at a time when the economy is crashing.
City officials let the community know they view those who live outside as subhuman during the Flag Day City Council meeting, puzzled by the reality of the existence of our unhoused.
Jessica York reported in the Sentinel, “In preparation for the encampment’s pending closure, city workers have begun to place some of the Benchland occupants in other available encampment sites, Huffaker said Tuesday. Several weeks ago, the city also stopped its practice of sending people living without shelter to the Benchlands, he said.”It is amazing that our highly paid City Manager Matt Huffaker would “discover last week” that people would rather live in the Benchlands than suffer in the prison camp they constructed up in Delaveaga Park.
“We did discover last week that some of the individuals that had secured
alternative sheltering sites, for one reason or another, had made the decision to return to the Benchlands,” Huffaker said. “Part of the challenge that we’re encountering as we move through the closure — and we do think it warrants getting some stronger controls of the physical site in place to help ensure that once individuals are relocating that we don’t have the possibility of folks repopulating the camp.”
The article continues “City Councilmember Donna Meyers asked Huffaker what the city’s strategy would be to prevent occupants’ return to the park site, once they had left. Huffaker referred to discussions with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement support at the site.”
“I’m just curious, if we are trying to move people out of the Benchlands, into other facilities and shelter, etc., I’m assuming at some point, in a sense, we kind of have to put up a ‘closed sign,’ in a sense, because that is not a sustainable site, obviously, long-term, because of flooding and all the other things that, unfortunately, we’ve learned over the years,” Meyers said.
Is the City suggesting a plan of forced internment of those who can’t afford housing? It sure sounds that way.
City officials are puzzled by the reality but as hundreds of people join the uncounted of our streets during the global economic collapse they may be in for a shock. The homeless are people. People with their own free will.
