From a prolonged pandemic, a rethink of life’s milestones?
Strategic framework, policy around homelessness response takes teamwork, county leader says
Wedding anniversaries for Elizabeth O’Connor Cole and her husband, Michael, usually involve a dinner reservation for two at a fancy restaurant. Not this time around.
As the pandemic raged last May, the Chicago mom of four unearthed her boxed wedding gown from 19 years ago, got it zipped with help from one of her daughters and surprised her spouse.
Cole recreated their reception menu — a shrimp appetizer and beef tenderloin — and pulled out her wedding china and silver after enlisting another of her kids to DJ their first-dance song, “At Last,” for a romantic turn around the living room. And the priest who married them offered a special blessing on Zoom with friends and family joining in.
“Spontaneous and a bit chaotic,” O’Connor Cole pronounced the celebration. “Still, it was probably the most meaningful and fun anniversary we’ve had.”
As the pandemic enters its second year, there’s a pent-up longing for the recent past, especially when it comes to life’s milestones. When the crisis finally resolves, will our new ways of marking births and deaths, weddings and anniversaries have any lasting impact? Or will freshly felt sentiments born of pandemic invention be fleeting?
Some predict their pandemic celebrations have set a new course. Others still mourn the way their traditions used to be.
Milestones, rituals and traditions help set the rhythm of our lives, from the annuals like birthdays and anniversaries to the one-timers like births and deaths, extending beyond those boundaries to more casual events like opening day (choose your sport), drinks out after work with colleagues and that first swim of summer.
Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania who studies memory and personal experience, says certain events shape lives differently — and have been reshaped just as differently during the pandemic. Perhaps most devastatingly impacted, she says, are death and dying, sitting at bedsides to comfort and attending funerals to mourn as the coronavirus has killed more than 2.3 million people around the world.
“That’s being felt the hardest because it’s the hardest to replace,” Talarico says. “That’s probably going to have the most
lasting impact.”
Renee Fry knows the feeling well. Her grandmother, Regina Connelly, died Dec. 6 of COVID-19 at her nursing home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. She had just turned 98. There was no dropping everything to be at her bedside. There was no large church celebration of her life followed by dinner for all.
“We had to rely on video conferencing,” Fry says.
But they also did something else. She and her sister, Julie Fry, put together a “memory book” shared with far-flung family and friends. They included Regina’s favorite prayer, the Hail Mary, and asked loved ones to recite it on her behalf. They filled pages with photos through the years, from a portrait of young Regina in a fine red dress (lipstick to match, gold pendant around her neck) to more casual shots with grandchildren.
Solving countywide, even nationwide, problems takes a little bit of patience and a lot of compromises.
This is just one message Santa Cruz County Human Services Department Director Randy Morris conveyed when speaking of strategic planning around the issue of homelessness during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
So in the first act of patience and compromise, Supervisors Ryan Coonerty and Manu Koenig allowed for the amendment of their proposal around temporary, safe shelter for the unhoused. This adjustment came just after they and their colleagues unanimously approved a strategic plan with the goal of reducing the number of unsheltered homeless by 50% and reducing homelessness as a whole in the county by 25% for the next three years.
Intercepting impact
Coonerty and Koenig came together to present a proposition to their colleagues. While considering “Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz: A Strategic Framework for Addressing Homelessness in Santa Cruz County,” why not reflect on the burden currently on the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville to provide safe parking and shelter beds, they asked in their report. With more than half of the county’s population living in unincorporated county, the pair proposed that 120 units be placed in the unincorporated Urban Services Line.
The Urban Services Line, just like the Rural Services Line, was created as a basic land use policy to separate urban and rural areas — encouraging development in urban areas and preserving natural resources in the rural areas, according to a planning document from 2020.
While Supervisor Zach Friend said he supported the idea of increasing temporary housing, he did not support limiting the housing to unincorporated areas and removing some districts that could be interested in helping from consideration. Coonerty said that he understood the perspective, but that an underlying point was to spread housing across the county so that concentration was lessened in certain cities. Coonerty asked that the board move forth with the recommendation and ask that staff return with an inventory of currently affordable housing, a document Friend was interested in obtaining and analyzing.
One constituent questioned Friend’s intentions in questioning the proposal, as much of his district in central and south county is unincorporated.
“I think Supervisor Friend knows very well that the city of Santa Cruz, in particular, has borne a vastly disproportionate share of the unsheltered population’s burden and it’s time the county, particularly unincorporated areas and the cities of Capitola and Scotts Valley step up and (take) a more proportionate share,” a Santa Cruz resident named Eric said. “I don’t know what you were getting at, Supervisor Friend, but if it was to protect your district from bearing some of the burden I am (siding) with Supervisor Coonerty on this.”
Ultimately, in order to bring a consensus, Coonerty motioned to accept the recommended action and request that information on existing affordable units countywide be brought back at staff’s next appearance in front of the board in August. In addition, at the request of chair Bruce McPherson Coonerty included a stipulation that parks be excluded from the possible sites.
Founding framework
The board presented a united front when it came to the second reading of “Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz.” After staff remarks on the final draft formed with community feedback in mind, it was passed unanimously.
The framework, which is meant to provide infrastructure and programming to handle the current homeless problem before FEMA-funded temporary housing provided during the COVID-19 health crisis ends, addresses the next three years of progress to make in six-month stints. The first six-month stint includes tasks such as establishing data dashboards around the county’s unhoused population.
Morris and his associate Robert Ratner, who leads the Housing for Health division of the department formed in November 2020, addressed a history of hesitation and hazy identity when it came to approaching the issue of homelessness prior to County Administrator Carlos J. Palacios’s arrival.
“This is not a struggle unique to Santa Cruz County. The tension between counties and cities is pronounced everywhere because the state and federal government doesn’t give us a lot of clarity about roles and responsibilities,” Morris said of the board and staff’s belief that the county could “do better” to coordinate with city and community entities. “(There are) some tensions that if we manage them well, I think we will maximize the efficacy of our work. I think if we don’t manage these well, they will compromise our work.”
Recognition of successes and failures in the past, as well as a shift in thinking, will help to keep hope and positivity in the forefront of the county’s response to homelessness, Ratner explained. For example, changing narratives such as homelessness being a mental health and addiction problem rather than a housing problem and people should move where they can afford to live can bring the conversation back to a main root of the problem: A lack of affordable housing. In addition, it allows the county to move forward in addressing homelessness with an equity and inclusion lens.
Solving the issue of the housing affordability gap, intersectional to homelessness, is not an immediate fix. In addition to needing to up its game in terms of Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers — a state measurement used to hold local governments accountable and determine which low-income groups are most underserved in housing efforts — the county needs money. It actually needs an estimated $35 million to provide the necessary proactive outreach, shelter and transitional housing, rapid rehousing slots, permanent supportive housing slots and affordable housing units.
“We have to spend some time — not all our time, we have to balance our time — working with coalitions regionally and across the state and lobbying for solutions at the federal and state level to really help move this needle,” Morris said. “Sometimes when the federal and state government recognize there are issues … they often look at communities where there is promise of having that money land and have that turn into good solutions to then make permanent solutions.”
This is why coming together, despite previous stories told, matters.
“Communities that are at odds and finger-pointing and not collaborating and not being a team are not a good investment,” he said. “I think the future holds more opportunity for more grants, more opportunities to bring resources and we want to in our applications be able to share that we are a team and we are a worthwhile investment.”