Photo by TARMO HANNULA
Tent housing on the benchlands of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz.
The Logic of Letting Millions of Americans Move On To the Streets
By FOOD NOT BOMBS CO-FOUNDER KEITH MCHENRY
On Aug. 24, the US Supreme Court ruled for the second time this summer that Biden’s eviction moratorium was unconstitutional. Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in rent and mortgage relief had been disbursed by the end of July. What is the plan now?
So as predicted, just 20 days after Congresswoman Cori Bush’s stunt on the steps of the US Capital, millions of American’s are about to be forced on to the streets. At least 9.4 million workers were cut off from Pandemic Unemployment Assistance on Labor Day. Millions more Americans could find themselves living under overpasses, in parks and doorways this winter. A cruel wave of Bidenville camps are already struggling against the sweeps. Why wasn’t Cori Bush and the Squad pushing for legislation to protect tenants and small landlords on June 1, when the US Supreme Court first ruled the CDC eviction moratorium was unconstitutional?
We see the tragic consequences here in Santa Cruz as our friends panic before their move to a tent along the San Lorenzo River or next to the freeway.
On Sept. 3, many people at the Oceana Motel and another dozen or more at the Sea Air Hotel in Santa Cruz were forced out of their COVID hotels into the doorways and parks of Santa Cruz. The ones that did secure temporary housing had to do so on their own without help from the city or county according to a number of those who spoke to me.
I received an email from Jessica Scheiner, Housing for Health County of Santa Cruz on Aug. 26, “Due to the shift in our COVID-19 homeless response and changing priorities and staffing, we are discontinuing our COVID-19 Homeless Services Providers' Call.”
In response, I emailed both Jessica and cc’d her supervisor, Dr. Robert Ratner, Director of Housing for Health Division, asking this question, “Hi Jessica. Is it true that those unhoused who live in the COVID hotels are being provided housing on September 3rd? I did hear of one friend that did get housing."
That same day, Dr Robert Ratner replied, “Hi Keith - we’re not 'providing housing' for all guests. Nearly all guests have an opportunity to secure housing authority subsidy vouchers and to receive supportive services. The guests need to make personal decisions about where they want to live given the supports and resources available.”
This one friend, Noël, who did get housing reported at our Santa Cruz Homeless Union meeting that she got help from the county’s Housing Matters program, or Housing for Health. She spent a month seeking her own apartment. Another friend from Sea Air, Nikki, has also been seeking a place to live since the announcement of the September 3 evictions. So far no luck. Her car died so she cannot return to her pre-COVID accommodations.
Anthony rolled up to Food Not Bombs in his electric wheelchair on Sunday to say Housing for Health and the other county agencies have provided no help in his finding a place for him to go after his COVID hotel eviction. He found a place on his own, but the landlord wants proof that they will be paid by the county, proof the county so far has not provided.
September has also been a rough month already for those who live in their vehicles. The Santa Cruz City Police ran a public relation's campaign, Operation Westside Story, where they bragged about towing people’s vehicular homes after aggressively ticketing people until it became too expensive for them to register their only safe place to sleep. The police seized four RVs and seven cars in one Westside sweep according to their Facebook publicity. Santa Cruz Homeless Union president, Alicia Kuhl, was in tears when she called me after witnessing another sweep reporting that the police took a disabled man’s RV, handed him his cane and left him standing on the side of the street without any of his belongings.
But there is plenty of money in the state's coffers to make sure no Californians are forced to live outside. In June 2021, Governor Newsom reported there was around a $75 billion dollar surplus, yet these funds have failed to provide rent relief or provide housing for the unhoused. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States.
Local Santa Cruz leaders claim they ran out of COVID money so the hotel and camp evictions are starting. The city and county managed Golf Course Camp will evict about 60 people in mid September according to people who live there. Unhoused people and their supporters are questioning where the nearly $100 million the county and city of Santa Cruz spends each year goes since there is little evidence of it providing services let alone housing for the thousands that already live outside.
What exactly is the point of the City of Santa Cruz’s Camping Services and Standards Ordinance that makes it a crime to sleep outside unless you are one of the lucky 150 to 200 people who get to participate in the city’s dusk to dawn safe sleeping site in a downtown parking lot? Are they hoping to drive their homeless problem out of town or are they participating in an ominous national strategy? Most local leaders are probably blind to such a strategy and believe they are just following state and federal policies.
So why would Democratic leaders fail to implement any solutions while they control the White House, Senate and Congress? Where was the legislation that the US Supreme Court announced was necessary to prevent millions of people from facing homelessness? They clearly have the money, having given trillions to the billionaire class.
We have known for more than a year that millions of households would be facing eviction and foreclosure yet little has been done to address the crisis. Sure property speculators are pouring millions of dollars into the Democratic Party and this could be at the root of the inaction, but there may be something much more sinister behind their refusal to protect the American people.
This is a small example of the funding that has been flooding into the Democratic Party on behalf of the real estate billionaires and their effort to end the eviction moratorium. George Marcus, chairman of both the massive real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap and the investment firm Essex Property Trust, gave $1 million on June 1, to House Majority PAC. That was the day the Congress should have been rushing through tenant and landlord protection.
Marcus also donated $263,400 in June to a fundraising committee benefiting Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s campaign, her leadership PAC, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Executives at Blackstone Group, gave $2.3 million to Senate Majority PAC, $250,000 to House Majority PAC, and $350,000 to Unite the Country, the pro-Biden super PAC. This June Blackstone said it was buying Home Partners of America, a company that owns more than seventeen thousand homes. A Koch Industry lobbyist, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, donated $336,500 to the Democrats after buying and managing more than 30,000 homes. Blackstone also became a minority investor in Tricon Residential, which owns more than thirty-thousand single family and multifamily rental homes. Heather Podesta, the former wife of Tony Podesta raised $177,000 for the DSCC and $114,000 for the DCCC this year. Heather is the founder and CEO of Invariant LLC, which lobbies for the National Association of Realtors and NAREIT, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The Podesta Group’s Clients have included Google, Wells Fargo, General Electric, Boeing the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His brother John previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and chaired Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016.
The National Association of Realtors provided funding for the recall campaign of pro-tenant Santa Cruz City Councilmembers Chris Krohn and Drew Glover, replacing them with their property speculator allies who have since paved the way for the current string of anti-homeless laws and rubber-stamped policies that encourage hedge funds to scoop up the seaside community.
But I believe there is possibly a more sinister reason why the Democrats have all but ignored this nation's shattering crisis. The DNC organized the Capital Steps stunt with Congressperson Cori Bush and Congress's failure to introduce life saving legislation gave me the impression that the government wants there to be millions living outside without access to water, trash collection and toilets.
They could be intentionally forcing a dystopian hell-scape on the American people so that after a winter living in a Mad Max Cyclone, the good people of our nation will demand something be done and that something will be the implementation of a total police state and the removal of the unhoused “useless eaters” to those FEMA camps our homeless friends have been warning us of for the past decade. This was the strategy that was useful for the National Socialists of Germany in 1930s and could be a useful strategy for the global predator class of today.
Otherwise why are they forcing millions of people on the cold streets this winter?
