Homeless Heist

There is something rotten in Santa Cruz.
I had attended a Food Not Bombs "solutions to homelessness" meeting on Sunday, June 14th, to see what was being proposed to aid in a newly developing crisis. The "solution" might be worse than the crisis.

For whatever reason, the Homeless Services Center has been blindsided by impending funding cuts to emergency shelter programs. This is no small matter and is one that deserves full attention and cooperation by our community. We've seen both the county and city working with due diligence to find ways to fill in the breech of these funding cuts. In fact, the county has recently stepped up to re-fund the Paul Lee Loft emergency shelter with +$100,000. The mail service is being under-written by EDD. What isn't certain is whether other day services such as showers and laundry will be provided to people in need, and whether the Winter Shelter will be activated during the winter months.

In this crisis, it is important for community to rally around the HSC to find ways to help. Two programs I administer; Sanctuary Camp and Warming Center Program have welcomed other groups into coalition to make an aid presentation to HSC should they need such bolstering. I've reached out to both Camp of Last Resort and Food Not Bombs. Both have not only rejected the offer but now are moving in another direction and have also moved out of integrity. What has seemed altruistic now may appear to be selfish and ultimately damaging to the very people they appear to be working for.

Camp of Last Resort has followed Sanctuary Camp into the ring of public discourse with an emaciated concept.
While Sanctuary Camp has proposed a highly organized community model that features dignity creating elements such as :
• addiction cessation meetings
• food prep area
• jobs program
• system of rules and enforcement
• basic infrastructure: porta potties, dumpster, boundary fence, 24hour-monitored entrance gate, etc.
• weekly community meetings with consensus decision-making
• one’s own tent with limited storage area… and more
CoLR’s model disallows tents because “people can’t be trusted with that level of privacy.” The idea that Phil Posner has been advocating for has people “rolling-it-up” in the morning and moving on. This is not even an emergency shelter model; it’s people sleeping outside without the dignity of even a privacy screen. Three time city council candidate loser, Steve Pleich has joined Posner in this fools errand.

I mention CoLR because it now has joined Food Not Bombs in lying to the community to use people experiencing homelessness as a front for a protest camp that will likely garner many camping citations while further alienating the rest of the community. CoLR’s spent a few months petitioning the community with specific language regarding setting up nightly camps in city and/or county parks. They have now changed all rhetoric into “taking over” a park without permission. Rather than joining with Sanctuary Camp to offer a full-spectrum of much-needed services for people experiencing homelessness, they’ve chosen to further limit the scope of their program and have now engaged in what amounts to a bait-and-switch (lying) to those who signed their petition. I attended a meeting Sunday, June 14 and expressed this failure of integrity to Posner, who said, “everyone who signed the petition understood that there might be an occupation camp.” Well I had signed the petition and watched its presentation to many others who had signed it and I emphatically say that there was never a mention that CoLR would be an unauthorized occupation of public space. This is the type of thing that has always, not only damaged the credibility of homeless activists, but real possibilities of alternative interim shelter systems for people experiencing homelessness.
https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/petition-to-establish-a-camp-of-last-resort

What is worse?
Food Not Bombs has hosted a series of “emergency breakfasts” outside of the fence at Homeless Services Center. In one email to their supporters (complete with a donation button), they claimed they had been welcomed by HSC to set up tables there, conflicting with their own statements that it was an occupation breakfast. I had inquired as to what the purpose of the “breakfasts” were, given that HSC will be serving daily breakfast until the end of June. They clearly were protesting the center and spreading misinformation to people accessing services there. This, amounts to kicking the center while it’s down, rather than offering solutions or supporting the population seeking services. Several meetings hosted by FnB on the post office steps have resulted in CoLR and FnB teaming up to plan occupations of city parks. Protestors seek to encourage homeless people to camp under tarps, following various activist marches. I strongly disagree with this tactic because it has been shown numerous times locally that it is primarily the people in need of housing who’ll be getting most of the police contact and resulting citations, while the activists will be sleeping snuggly at home.

This planned park occupation comes on the heals of a Food Not Bombs SNAFU which saw Abbi Samuels encouraging people to bring “buckets of shit” to the last city council meeting. As council was about to assess programs to trim in order to address budget concerns, the city manager’s office had added the newly funded 24hour public restroom program to the list to be scrutinized. My project, Downtown Bathroom Task Force, had instead put a call out that city residents applaud the council for it’s unanimous vote in favor of all-night restrooms. The idea of people bringing excrement to council chambers had caused a great deal of alarm and demonstrated Samuels’ distain for local government. Although she instead brought some flowers herself, she was heard to say, “we should’ve brought the shit anyway.”

Recently a Grand Jury has convened and has insisted that numerous homeless service organizations that have been focused on permanent supported housing must now include emergency shelter as a component of their programs. Sanctuary Camp is well positioned to answer this challenge. It is unfortunate, that when what is needed to address our collective crises of homelessness, is a coming together of activist and advocate groups, as well as local residents, some of these are instead going in the opposite direction and will be taking the community’s parks hostage as they force a list of confusing and unfocused demands on a city that is struggling to save the one large non-profit that has been serving people experiencing homelessness for the past two decades.

Let’s keep our higher mind and our long-term goals in sight as we greet this occupation. We may be seen to offer actual solutions as the protest-activist community demands things that will never be offered and will ultimately make things worse for those experiencing homelessness.