SANTA CRUZ, CA — The City of Santa Cruz is forcing hundreds of people who are homeless to stand out in the atmospheric river. Just imagine standing day after day in these torrents of rain with no way to change into dry clothes. These people could be spared this suffering if the city opened empty public buildings like the Civic Auditorium, the Veterans Hall, and the Warriors Stadium for 24 hours a day during these deadly storms but they have refused. The one emergency shelter in town is only open for 25 people from the hours of 8:00 pm to 8:00 am leaving those few lucky people to spend their days huddled against the rain in the doorways of failed businesses.
The city of Santa Cruz is not only failing to provide safe shelter during the atmospheric river on March 9, 2023, the city threatened to arrest Food Not Bombs if we shared our meal next to [downtown] Parking Garage 10, forcing people to stand in the downpour to get the only daily hot meal provided to the homeless during three years of the pandemic lockdown. This sure is an odd way to honor the city’s one volunteer organization who shared food and survival gear every day since March 14, 2020.
On June 29, 2021, the City of Santa Cruz announced they would receive $14.5M from the State to fund their “homelessness response.” So far there is little evidence that this has provided any assistance and it sure has not been used to provide emergency shelter from the brutal atmospheric river.
As has been the case during each of this winter’s storms, hundreds of additional people have been made homeless. “There are about 1,700 people displaced from their homes in Pajaro, and the town is inundated with water throughout,” Monterey County Communications Director Nick Pasculli told NPR. Food Not Bombs has been providing food and sleeping bags to those who lost their housing during these storms.
Adding to the crisis is the fact that hundreds of families have already had their food stamps reduced and there are additional cuts set for April.
“The average household on CalFresh will lose about $200 a month,” said Becky Silva, government relations director at the California Association of Food Banks. A single-person household, for instance, could drop from $281 a month in food aid to as low as $23 in April.
Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank collapsed this week and a bank run on the New Republic also started. Many area businesses who had deposits in Silicon Valley Bank may not be able to meet their payrolls. Over 150,000 tech workers were let go in 2022, many employed in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Another 68,500 tech workers were sacked in January 2023.
By the time you read this, the news might be much worse, making the need to respond to the crisis in homelessness even more dire.
Along with a failing economy we are faced with the very real possibility of a global war between nuclear-armed nations.
Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs had been preparing for the economic crisis, buying our first shipping container with a grant from Second Harvest. We held a benefit concert with David Rovics at London Nelson Community Center in September 2018 and a year later I shared a flyer pretending that the city had a plan to help the residents during the global economic crash. Well it looks like that time has come and still the city has no plan and it is up to volunteer groups like Food Not Bombs to provide for the community.
The pandemic was the first major event that showed we are on our own. The government has no intention of supporting anyone but themselves. News that it would only take a few weeks to “flatten the curve” gave us hope that the Little Red Church’s Monday night meal, the London Nelson Senior Meal, and Saint Francis would reopen in a month or two. Our little crew sat at LuLu Carpenters on March 14, 2020, plotting out our COVID safety protocol believing that we could cover the void left by the shuttering of the indoor meals during the few months they would be closed.
A few days later the city asked us to lure our unhoused friends into their Triage Cages, fenced-in parking lots scattered around downtown but we refused. Second Harvest Food Bank delivered its first of many truckloads of rice, beans, and other dry goods. We were approached by Live Oak School District seeking groceries for their homebound families so we did. We packed dry goods into an empty office and dining area at India Joze. Dozens of people stepped up to volunteer. People delivered homemade meals. Good-hearted people dropped off handmade cloth masks. We connected parents with unhoused children, fixed vehicles saving their homes from the city tow trucks, and helped charge their phones. We provided the only reliable hand washing station.
The CZU Lightning Complex fires sent more people to our meals and clothing distribution. After winning a federal lawsuit against sweeping the homeless from San Lorenzo Park we began a weekly distribution of a pallet or more of food to Mama Shannon’s pantry and JP’s Kitchen in the Benchlands.
Food Not Bombs bought two more 20-foot shipping containers to store our back stock of food and equipment, moving them each time the city evicted us from one empty parking lot to another.
So at the third anniversary of Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs sharing hot meals and survival gear, it is clear that we can’t depend on the city to provide life-saving services. But we can depend on them to implement the most brutal policies designed to inflict as much suffering as possible.
The violence of those at city hall is horrific and criminal. A very special kind of cruelty.
City of Santa Cruz – 831-420-5010
Mayor Fred Keeley – fkeeley@cityofsantacruz.com
City Manager Matt Huffaker – mhuffaker@santacruzca.gov
Police Chief Bernie Escalante – bescalante@cityofsantacruz.com
Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs
PO Box 422 – Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA
Keith McHenry is co-founder of Food Not Bombs.
