“The staff at the Armory treated me so badly I climbed on the van with my walker and bags and moved to the bushes near the Benchlands,” explained a recently widowed woman in her 70s at the Union of the Homeless meeting this week. She was one of more than twenty Benchlands residents who came to discuss the closing of camp.
Another camper spoke about staying at the Salvation Army run Overlook Camp. The van driver didn’t show so she was late to her job. Her employer wanted a note as to why she was late but to do so would tip her boss off to the fact she is homeless and would result in her losing her job. A third pointed out that you have to catch the van before 8:00 pm and if you miss it you have to spend the night on the streets.
At an April City Council meeting, City Manager Huffaker noted, “We did discover last week that some of the individuals that had secured alternative sheltering sites, for one reason or another, had made the decision to return to the Benchlands. We do think it warrants getting some stronger controls of the physical site in place to help ensure that once individuals are relocating that we don’t have the possibility of folks repopulating the camp.”
The people participating in the meeting voted to invite city officials to the Monday, August 15th meeting so they could hear the voices of those who will be impacted by the announced eviction. They also suggested we request an audit of the millions spent by the city and county on homeless programs. We also agreed to send a letter to the city to get more details on the scheduled evictions.
So the closure of the camp is set to begin. City Manager Huffaker responded to the Homeless Union’s request for details on the evictions saying, “Fencing and closure of the upper park will begin next week.”
According to Jessica York’s August 4, 2022 article “City targets August camp closure,” city spokesperson Elizabeth Smith claims “Meanwhile, in the face of a national supply chain shortage, Santa Cruz crews and contractors are limited in their access to chain link fencing needed to portion off the Benchlands camp in phases.”
Food Not Bombs has been delivering more than a pallet of dry goods and produce to the Benchlands every week for nearly two years. Recently, as our volunteer was helping unload, she turned and saw three police officers standing at the front of her car. “I’m towing you right now,” barked Officer Ross. Joy asked him to take off his mirror sun glasses and he did. “Why aren’t you giving a warning?” she asked. “This is your warning,” he viciously blurted. So Joy drove the rest of the delivery up to the location Ross had directed her to. Two more officers arrive and one of them writes her a ticket for driving in a park.
The city has repeatedly bragged about getting $14 million in funds to “help” the homeless, but much of that money will pay for staff. The Homeless Persons Healthcare Project claims about 250 people make the Benchlands their home but the number could be much higher.
If the Benchlands evictions happen the City’s misuse of the $14 million in funds to help the homeless will leave the campers to seek shelter in the doorways and roadsides of downtown Santa Cruz or force people into the dry tinder of the Pogonip. This winter the number of people becoming unhoused is sure to increase and could double by the first of the year.
“I really think this is the tip of the iceberg,” executive director of the Colorado Poverty Law Project Shannon MacKenzie (as reported by the Associated Press) said of June filings in Denver, which were about 24% higher than the same time three years ago. “Our numbers of evictions are increasing every month at an astonishing rate, and I just don’t see that abating any time soon.
“According to The Eviction Lab, evictions in several cities are running far above historic averages, with Minneapolis-St. Paul 91% higher in June, Las Vegas up 56%, Hartford, Connecticut, up 32%, and Jacksonville, Florida, up 17%. In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, eviction filings in July were the highest in 13 years, officials said.”
The Public Policy Institute of California reports that with the state’s eviction ban set to end on June 30, almost 1.5 million California renters are behind on their rent payments, and more than 600,000 of them believe that they are likely to face eviction in the next two months.
When I recently spoke with Santa Cruz Mayor Sonja Brunner she agreed that the doorways downtown are already occupied each night by those who cannot find a place to sleep.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO LIVE IN THE BENCHLANDS!
Reach Food Not Bombs at www.foodnotbombs.net
