City met its match on homeless camp
News Flash: Santa Cruz is in three simultaneous crises: a housing crisis, a homelessness crisis, and a COVID-19 crisis. Hardly a news flash. And yes, these three crises are related. And Santa Cruz City Manager Martin Bernal, and the bureaucracy he leads, has been exacerbating the multiple calamities playing out not so harmoniously in his city. And I do mean his city. In the face of the pandemic, Bernal’s been given extraordinary “executive” powers to go beyond the City Council and dictate public policy. Until now. On Jan. 20, Bernal met his match in federal court.
In recent years, Bernal has repeatedly directed the police to remove people who have few alternatives, forcibly if necessary, from areas where encampments have taken root. Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Santa Cruz County Health Director recommend against moving large numbers of displaced people during the pandemic. Their expert opinions may be backed by science, but, armed with a master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a Stanford BA, our City Manager presumes to know better.
Using his new powers, on Dec. 17, Bernal issued an “executive order” to extract campers in San Lorenzo Park. This order was to be carried out over the holiday commemorating a homeless family, a couple and their infant son, searching for shelter as they entered the city of Nazareth on a cold, clear night more than two millennia ago. Bernal was fully aware of the CDC recommendations as well as a Dec. 21 admonition by County Health Director Gail Newell who cautioned against moving the camp.
On Dec. 28, police, campers, and community activists confronted each other in San Lorenzo Park. Thank goodness, cooler heads prevailed, and the police stood down. Two days later, the Santa Cruz Homeless Union obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the City from U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen. After hearing arguments on Jan. 6 from Assistant City Attorney Cassie Bronson and Homeless Union counsel, Anthony Prince, Judge Van Keulen made her decision: because of COVID-19 concerns among this vulnerable population, the 100-200 resident campers can stay in the park. The judge seemed to chastise Bernal in particular: “...the CDC Guidelines before this Court are clear and specific: if there is no alternative housing available, leave the encampments to remain where they are because clearing encampments may increase the potential for infectious disease spread.” Judge
Van Keulen’s ruling represented a decisive victory for campers and homeless rights advocates. It was also a stunning blow to Bernal and the politically tone deaf city bureaucracy.
The Jan. 6 Zoom court session had publicly laid bare the depth of the city’s compassion deficit. The city’s attorneys not only sought to undermine science in their presentation to the court, they showed themselves to be callous to a growing economically-vulnerable, housing-poor population. The judge wasn’t impressed, and neither were viewers. Most Santa Cruzans are simply not as heartless as our city was portrayed by its lawyers. Residents I know want more resources channeled to assist our neighbors who have lost housing. We do not want people to be moved around like cheap plastic chess pieces.
Of course, in normal times, most of us agree that San Lorenzo Park, the river levee, and the Highway 1 and Highway 9 intersection are not places where people should be camping. Not only are they not designed for it, camping interferes with other uses, notably recreation, sitting, strolling, jogging, or bird watching. But these are not normal times. Bernal now occupies that position of the heartless banker, Mr. Potts, from the timeless movie, It’s a Wonderful Life .Wehaveno housing to offer the hundreds of people now camping on the streets and in our parks. The rains are bringing new evacuations. Forcing campers to simply move on is a recipe for disease spread and social unrest, and the judge saw it that way, too.