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Anti-Homeless Architecture — Anti-Homeless Fence at the Post Office in Santa Cruz

by Keith McHenry (keith [at] foodnotbombs.net)
A safe dry shelter for over a dozen of our homeless friends is now being fenced off and one of our city's most historic and beautiful buildings is being defaced.
sm_po_fence_1.jpg
ANTI-HOMELESS ARCHITECTURE - Anti-homeless fence at the post office in Santa Cruz. Historic building being defaced. A safe dry shelter for over a dozen of our homeless friends is now being fenced off and one of our city's most historic and beautiful buildings is being defaced. Bathrooms, housing and services could have been provided but officials find spending tax dollars on anti-homeless redevelopment is a better use of money.

Santa Cruz is big on the use of anti-homeless architecture installing high frequency sound machine’s call Mosquito Boxes in parks and along the San Lorenzo River to drive the homeless away from under the bridges, removing the planter boxes and free speech zones on the Pacific Avenue Mall, and replacing the lawn at City Hall with gravel and rocks and now the ugly chain link fencing at the historic downtown post office.

Along with anti-homeless architecture comes the sleeping ban which makes it illegal to sleep outside at night and illegal to sleep under a blanket. A law that can contribute to the death of our friends like 53 year-old Micheal Mear who died of hypothermia on February 17, 2017. Medical staff told his sister his body temperature was only 70 degrees when a motorist found him unconscious on Potrero Street. He died soon after from cardiac arrest at Dominican Hospital.

I was heart broken when we ran out of blankets during the Tuesday, March 7th Freedom Sleepers sleep-out, turning away several desperate people. Michael’s sister Jerry cried as she asked me why he didn’t even have a warm blanket to save his life. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was illegal to sleep protected from the cold.

They will never be able to drive poverty out of sight unless they make housing affordable. Instead it looks like the liberals are making their move using the chaos of Trump to camouflage their anti-homeless cruelty.

The community is so anti-homeless it is even willing to deface its own beautiful historic post office with an ugly chain link fence. J.M. Brown’s article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel "The 1912 Renaissance Revival building -- the oldest continually operating California post office on the National Register of Historic Places -- was modeled after the 15th century Filippo Brunelleschi's Foundling Hospital in Florence, Italy. It is home to four priceless murals by the American artist Henrietta Shore."

"Inspired by classical Renaissance style, the design asserts the building's importance to civic life and confidence in the community's future -- a message repeated in countless schools, banks, libraries and other civic structures from the same period," said former mayor and history buff Cynthia Mathews. "With its dignified, graceful detail, quality materials and prominent location, the Santa Cruz Post Office was intended to reflect the community's importance, identity and aspirations, and it remains a defining feature of our downtown today."

…the latest front in the spread of ‘defensive architecture’.

Is such open hostility towards the destitute making all our lives uglier?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-architecture-keeps-poverty-undeen-and-makes-us-more-hostile
§Temporary?
by Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs
sm_anti-homeless-fence-santa-cruz-post-office.jpg
Detail shows how the fence is attached.
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Comments (Hide Comments)
by Robert Norse
1984_came_early_in_santa_cruz_for_the_women_s_march__final.pdf_600_.jpg
I distributed the attached flyer at the Women's Day protests yesterday. It summarizes some of the more long-standing anti-homeless laws and policies, supported by supposed long-time liberals of the Coonerty clan, who own the Bookshop Santa Cruz.
by Gregory Wilcox
It is certainly a federal crime to deface federal government property. Indeed, there may be enhanced penalties for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places (the Santa Cruz Post Office building has been on the Register since 1985).
by Razer Ray
I went looking in the sentinel for any mention of the death of "Micheal Mear" (I also tried Michael Mear and Mears) and found no reference. But I did find an arrest record and court dockets dating back to 2008 for "Michael Mears".

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20081114/new-deputies-crack-down-on-drug-crimes-north-of-santa-cruz

If this is the same person he was a long-time methamphetamine addict, and honestly, I'm surprised he lived this long.

Hate to sound crass and cynical, but meth is a death trip, and I don't feel sorry when someone gets the kind of trip they want. Using him as a straw man for a whine about an alleged anti-homeless fence at the Post Office seems pretty fucking stupid and less than representative of why anyone should give a fuck about the houseless. He NEEDED DRUG ADDICTION ASSISTANCE A BLANKET WASN'T GOING TO DO SHIT. HE WOULDN'T HAVE HAD THE BLANKET AN HOUR LATER HE WOULD HAVE SOLD IT OR TRADED IT FOR METH.

Maybe MY doorway mate is a better representative. He got stranded here after leaving Austin Texas when his work ran out and a friend offered to house him here. It didn't work out and he ended up crashing at my squat.

Within 2 weeks he found a part-time job downtown, and will still be sleeping in a doorway while the city and it's nasty grant oriented services continue to house addicts, behavioral health cases, and anyone they find they can paste a federal check to but WILL NOT ASSIST someone who is actually trying to be a functional member of the community.

I kidded him the other night about how he had the ideal situation. He lives 'footsteps away from where he works', and went on to mention when and if he ever went looking for a place to live, IF he could find one, he was no longer going to be 'footsteps away from where he works' He;s going to be dozens of miles away.

And that, in a nutshell IS the "Homeless Problem" here. A pandering to drug addicts and behavioral health cases for the grant money it brings, and NOTHING for someone who wants to be a part of the community, and the so-called homeless activists seem OK with that perversion of community-building, and so does the santa cruz sentinel, the SCPD, and the DTA, which uses the sociological fallout and crime to further their anti-homeless agenda, while the activists keep bleating at the moon into a continual wall of bad publicity about the houseless.
by Seen
It's not a federal crime to make changes to a property on the National Register of Historic Place. In fact, National Register properties can be demolished if there's no other feasible option to accomplish project objectives. Usually recordation is done following very detailed guidelines. In this case the actual building itself is not being altered. All the Postal Service has to do is comply with NEPA.
by Jessica York (posted by Norse)
For those interested in the Sentinel spin, here's tomorrow's story on the issue. York makes no attempt to actually research Fardette's claims, nor present any evidence that FNB provides unhealthy food. There is also no mention of the crackdown all over town--at laundromats, Safeway, and other businesses against the poor. Nor of the cutoff of meals to homeless people for the last year and a half at the Homeless (Lack of) Services Center at Coral Street.

To read comments and add your own, the link for the story is http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20170313/NEWS/170319906 but the Sentinel has also made on-line reading more difficult and in some cases required payment.



Santa Cruz Post Office joins residents in face-off over Food Not Bombs food distribution

SANTA CRUZ >> A disagreement between downtown residents and a nonprofit activist group over its weekly free public meals has heightened with involvement of the U.S. Postal Service.

On Thursday, a chain-link fence was installed around the Santa Cruz Post Office’s exterior, including its Pacific Avenue and Water Street sides. The fence, said U.S. Postal Service regional spokesman Augustine Ruiz, is intended primarily to protect the nearly 105-year-old building from damage and limit its use only to branch customers. The downtown building, he said, “has a serious homeless issue” that has progressively escalated recently. Ruiz added that social activist group Food Not Bombs’ twice weekly vegan meal distribution nearby has added to the situation.

The Postal Service is responding to an increase in customer and employee concerns about homeless people, Ruiz said. Recently, an apparently homeless man threatened to stab an employee, Ruiz said. Authorities will need to undertake a more formal process with its Postal Inspection Services before more permanent fencing can be set up, he said.

“Many times they block the egress going in and out of the post office lobby,” Ruiz said. “Not only have they been blocking the egress, they have also been leaving great amounts of trash, needles and feces/urine around the entrances and around the perimeter of the building. This creates an unsafe and unsanitary environment for our customers and employees.”

The building, among California’s oldest continually operating post offices, is designed in a Renaissance Revival style and is part of the National Register of Historic Places. Those without shelter have slept and stored their possessions along the building’s walls and steps for years.
Downtown resident Janet Fardette has zeroed in on Food Not Bombs’ twice weekly demonstrations and sidewalk meal offerings as the primary problem. Fardette has worked on and off at curbing the weekend effort from occurring, within blocks of her home, for at least two years.

“I want people fed. I am not arguing that at all,” Fardette said on Monday. “We’re against doing it on the streets. What he’s doing is creating a mess downtown.”

The 25-year-old Santa Cruz chapter of Food Not Bombs most recently began gathering at the post office not long after Occupy Santa Cruz protests in late 2011 and serves between 89 and 150 people a day, said Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry.

The downtown location is optimal, said McHenry, due to its space and high traffic visibility. The new fence intensified the usual weekend effort into a “party,” as many supporters gathered to decorate the fence, draping signs and donated clothing across it, he said. McHenry said a number of volunteers with the group are specifically dedicated to cleaning up after each event and that he believes the latest outcry is part of a welling “anti-homeless” movement.

“The purpose of Food Not Bombs is to end the economic and political system that causes people to be homeless and hungry,” McHenry said when asked if he had considered relocating in order to placate Fardette and others. “We do it through sharing food.”

Fardette, who also organizes the community cleanup group Leveelies — which she says is not involved in this push — has gained more than 100 supporting signatures on an online Change.org petition urging the outdoor meal distribution to end. Similarly, McHenry launched his own petition on March 1 rebutting Fardette’s, with more than 1,110 signatures.

Fardette cited her reasons for wanting the meal offerings, currently held each Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m., to move indoors as: availability of tables, chair, toilets and garbage cans. Fardette said she believes that while Food Not Bombs may clean up debris while they are on site, the problem is unsanitary conditions left after they are gone. She said she has observed an increase in the downtown rat population since November.

McHenry said the increased rat population could be attributed to the season’s flooded rivers, increased plant growth and/or downtown food-serving businesses’ clientele. He said there are also some people, as with any population, who are careless with their trash.

“What happens is these people get treated so badly, like they themselves are garbage,” McHenry said of Santa Cruz’s homeless population. “One, they don’t have much self-esteem. But two, it’s just not practical to be carrying away all of your litter when you have to guard your sleeping bag and your backpack from people stealing it or the police taking it.”

Santa Cruz County Health Officer and Environmental Health Director Dr. Arnold Leff said in the past he has urged McHenry to obtain a permit to ensure safe handling and distribution of the food. Leff said Monday that he was in the process of drafting another letter to McHenry along the same line. Unlike with a restaurant, Leff said, he cannot simply close down a Food Not Bombs demonstration. Other cities attempting to prevent sister Food Not Bombs distributions have failed, Leff said.
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