Santa Cruz grapples with homelessness
County unsheltered population increased by 15 percent in 2017
SANTA CRUZ » Tall fences have gone up around parks and other public places and the city toughened penalties for nuisance crimes this year as a growing unsheltered homeless population has tested this surf town’s tolerance.
A national report released this month showed that Santa Cruz County hosts an outsized share of the homeless problem, compared to other small cities and counties nationwide. The county’s overall homeless population of 1,846 made it the eighth largest in the country, compared to 306 other small regions, according to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development report.
The same report found that among the nation’s major metropolitan areas, Santa Clara County’s 6,319 homeless individuals ranked fifth largest, behind Los Angeles, New York, Seattle’s King County and San Diego.
Overall, homelessness increased in Santa Cruz County by 15 percent in 2017, compared to a similar oneday count conducted in January 2015. With the exception of 2015’s significant 44.5 percent drop, the region’s homeless population has generally remained steady through the years, according to homeless census data.
Even as Santa Cruz in 2017 put more public resources toward solving its homelessness quandaries, it has spent the year grappling with deaths, public impacts and health outbreaks.
Stories of those such as Jesse Lycett and Steve Bordwine, both 32-year-old men who were found dead this winter out in the open at the San Lorenzo Park benchlands, have emerged as the hard signs of Santa Cruz’s struggles with homelessness in the past year. The deaths were two of the 50 counted countywide in the same period.
Stories of those such as Jesse Lycett and Steve Bordwine, both 32-yearold men who were found dead this winter out in the open along the San Lorenzo river, emerged as the hard signs of Santa Cruz’s struggles with homelessness in the past year. The deaths were two of the 50 counted countywide in the same period.
An encampment of homeless people along the San Lorenzo Riverbank parkland between downtown and the government center Ocean Street known as the “benchlands” has become a bellwether of Santa Cruz’s struggles.
Dozens of people have set up tents for sleeping since October, within easy viewing distance of the Santa Cruz County Government Building, even after the partial opening of the annual Winter Shelter program last month.
Both Santa Cruz city and county leaders pledged last month to work toward founding a new homeless shelter of some form, likely primarily for use as a “day center” for people to access basic hygiene, obtain case management and have a place to spend their time.
The benchlands camp, due to be disbanded in midJanuary and relocated to a city-owned gravel parking lot in the industrial Harvey West neighborhood on River Street, began as a symptom of at least two earlier major city encampment breakups during 2017.
The first dispersal was from around the grounds of the City Hall and Downtown Library complexes in May, after years of protest-style encampments, and later from outside the downtown post office in October.
As Santa Cruz County public health officials continued to chase down a hepatitis A outbreak among homeless people and drug abusers since the summer, city officials in November installed several handwashing stations near portable toilets around town, including benchlands area.
At the same time, Police Chief Andy Mills’ public editorial to not enforce the city’s overnight sleeping ban outside the downtown and city efforts to keep the benchlands clean converged to create a tacitly endorsed homeless encampment.
Discussions over responsibility for the homeless between the city of Santa Cruz or the county of Santa Cruz sparked tensions between elected leaders, as each side said they expected greater help and involvement from the other. County elected officials voiced a desire to greater clarity from their city counterparts on a plan to resolve the homeless encampment, while city leaders criticized county-level social service funding.
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, referring to the city’s recent budget decision to pull back funding from a downtown mental health program, said the county cannot fund programs with a disproportionate benefit to a city that “is a partner only part of the time.”
Officials on both sides had set “mid-December” as goal dates to find a shelter alternative to the benchlands camp, a deadline each failed to meet. County Homeless Services Coordinator Rayne Marr told the County Board of Supervisors this month that though several potential temporary day-use sites have been identified, an opening date is still months away.
In the meantime, Santa Cruz City Manager Martín Bernal announced plans Dec. 5 to repurpose a planned free homeless storage program site, at a gravel lot on River Street headed out of town, to relocate the benchlands encampment come mid-January. The riverside lot, smaller in size than the benchlands and further from the downtown, was deemed unfit for winter shelter after last winter’s rains and flooding.
The new encampment site will be modeled after an emergency campground in San Diego, Bernal said, and will feature increased rules, security, social services, storage and transportation.
The shelved storage program was one of 20 recommendations made by the three-member Santa Cruz City Council Homeless Coordinating Committee in May. Programs from the report that have been implemented so far include formation of a “2 by 2” committee of two city and two county elected leaders to discuss homeless matters, and the July launch of the jobs skills Santa Cruz Downtown Streets Team program.
Homeless related efforts in 2017 included a federal $2.2 million youth homeless demonstration grant. Santa Cruz police began offering homeless veterans a ride to the Veterans Resource Center in Live Oak. The Santa Cruz Coalition on Homelessness formed in May to turn the local ‘protest movement’ into a ‘solutions movement.’ And local historian Sibley Verbeck Simon revealed plans to privately build a permanent supportive housing structure on the Homeless Services Center’s campus for the area’s most chronically homeless.