By Robert Norse
I wish Justin Cummings were “the best hope” for Santa Cruz, as Stephen Kessler suggests (Dec. 14). I wish his Santa Cruz City Council or the powerful City Manager Martin Bernal were.
Since, they ignore the Winter Shelter crisis, so the community must not.
Cummings’ desertion of his renter constituents and the Progressive majority is well-documented elsewhere (“A Blast at Vice-Mayor Cummings Record As the Council Dallies” at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/29/18827718.php) and “Open Letter to Vice-Mayor Justin Cummings” at (https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/21/18827505.php) and avoided any meaningful and cost-effective encampment alternatives. Kessler denounces me without addressing any of the issues.
The wretched truth is that things are back in the hands of the community. Last winter, Ross Camp was Chief Mills’ answer. The year before he directed the unsheltered to the San Lorenzo Benchlands. This year people are huddling in doorways, hiding under bridges, and ducking into parking garages (from which First Alarm evicts them into the rain). Police are destroying tents, treating homeless survival gear like rubbish, and playing deadly game of “whack-a-mole” with the disabled, elderly and vulnerable—battered and drenched by winter weather.
This year, however, we saw the beginnings of a fight back. The community moved to support Ross Camp and the subsequent better-managed Camp Phoenix with supplies, advice and volunteers. Visiting police and fire officials could find no reason to close down the camp, so authorities ignored City Council’s own camp-closing protocols and simply moved in to dislodge 60-100 people, giving most of them no place to go, a legally risky move for the City, given injunctive action being taken elsewhere in places like Santa Rosa.
The federal courts ruled that survival camp destruction is unconstitutional given lack of indoor shelter. So, Mills cops and rangers are now using other devices (“no trespassing,” “closed areas,”, “blocking the sidewalk,” “public nuisance” and “illegal lodging”) as “lawful” pretexts to play the same old game—futile, expensive and cruel as ever.
City Council—largely through the agenda manipulations of City Manager Bernal and ex-Mayor Watkins—has given us winter shelter (optimistically) for only 20% of those outside—less than last year in spite of huge amounts of incoming money. Supporters of the Mathews-Myers “Old Guard” have used a well-funded smear/censure campaign outside cash to crush progressive reform again as they did to defeat last year’s rent control reform.
We must challenge their key weapon–the false “Homeless as Menace” narrative, liberally laced with “needles” and “poo poo” bugaboos. In a classic “smear the victim” tactic City staff has cut back bathroom access (Louden Nelson, for instance), reduced shelter, funded police and rangers to destroy homeless tents and property, and dismissed the angry response at City Council as “incivility,” “bullying,” and “vilification.”
But the truth seeps out. The winter is upon us again. And there is no escaping the visible reality of those shivering outside.
Meanwhile, the City Manager and Mayor postpone any discussion of action until January. The Council goes on Xmas vacation. The Council’s homeless CACH committee obediently presents its report without protest. Two Homeless Death Memorials mourn the dead this week (10 a.m. Thursday at Harvey West and 4 p.m. Saturday at the Post Office).
But the City has vacant buildings, unused property, hundreds of displaced renters (the real majority of the homeless population), and hundreds more community members who care enough to act. It’s clear the those outside must create or take their own shelter and those who give a damn must support them.
Take blankets, tents and clothing to Food Not Bombs from 4-6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays outside the main Post Office. Help encourage the homeless and their supporters to create their own survival areas. Contact the Santa Cruz Homeless Union at 831-431-7766 to support such efforts and back legal challenges as reactionary city officials move to drive homeless out of sight and out of town.
Robert Norse is with HUFF Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom.
