This story is by Alicia Kuhl, President of the Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Homeless Union. Alicia is formerly homeless; she lived in a RV with her family. See original posting at Santa Cruz County Homeless Advocates.
Some people do need to get a clue.
We have thousands of homeless people. The individuals that you see on Coral Street [Santa Cruz, California,] are a small percentage of the homeless population. Many of those individuals do need substance abuse assistance, however we have thousands more that are not in your face, hiding from stigma and staying in vehicles, shelters, motels, and couches, etc. Workers, veterans, elderly and disabled, and single moms etc., that NEED affordable housing.
They are counting on the community to care about them and come up with some housing solutions and hoping you don’t judge them based on the percentage of people you are visually uncomfortable with and may find less deserving of services.
Ask yourself, could it be intentional that the city and county allows me to see the most negative parts of homelessness, like substance abuse and trash on the streets, on purpose so that I develop a negative view of people who are unhoused in general? So when it’s time to vote for solutions you vote based on “Coral Street”?
Please listen to me, stop thinking that way. Avoid the false narratives and opinions and just do some research.
The main cause of homelessness is the high cost of housing! This is a fixable issue; some individuals will need a higher level of care but the MAJORITY (read it again) of unhoused people need—and can function perfectly fine —if they had an affordable place to live.
We need to prioritize the funding for homelessness on programs that use most of it on housing for individuals instead of staffing, and buy City and County owned property that can be turned into permanent 100% income based affordable housing.
We need services to prevent homelessness like rent assistance programs, and we need some actual tenant protections across the board, along with some rent control because even raising the rent 5-7% annually, while requiring the landlord to make zero improvements is not the vibe…
We need a day center so people can do laundry, use the computer, and take a shower especially while we lack the housing options that we desperately need. We need the County to review and update the criteria for opening the extreme weather shelter to include rainy days so people can dry off and prevent hypothermia,
Anyway. we can do so much better.
Be careful how you vote folks.
Thanks for reading — Alicia Kuhl, President of the Santa Cruz Homeless Union
For more, read Homeless in Santa Cruz: ‘The Solution is Housing, a 2023 People’s Tribune interview with Alicia Kuhl where she describes how she herself became homeless and how the homeless are stigmatized by the false narrative about homelessness.
