Time to Stand Up

Although I appreciate your article, greatly Steve, for the fact that you elucidate the suffering that the homeless go through in this city, at least you describe it to some extent, and also you describe the policies that the city pursues, to some extent. However, you are too kind to these officials, who for whatever reason, I can not say (publicly, at least), but their lack of regard and concern for the welfare of poor people who are forced to attempt to survive out of doors, has shown to be not "missing the mark", but quite deliberate. These far right reactionary extremists are not only not solving any problems that would get to the root of people becoming homeless and remaining homeless in the city and county of Santa Cruz. These same people are always perpetuating the same of policy of eradicate the homeless from our city, by any means possible. These policy makers on the extreme far right, actually, in fact, stop just short of advocating, publicly, for it to be lawful to outright kill homeless people, with impunity. The City of Santa Cruz is ruled, currently and has been for quite some time by extremely conservative extremists, who pretend- to the extent that they must, and they hide and they cover their actual deeds and their actual de facto policies and directions. I judge them as being so extremely far right and punitive exactly because I have observed and witnessed and watched these city staffers and elected officials for years and decades, so I have seen the policies they dictate at city council and I have observed what actually takes place outside on the street, and in the camps and in the shelters, all over what happens, in fact to homeless people. I have followed these folks who make up our, "officialdom" and who create the actual policies which are actually not rudderless at all, Steve, they are fully consistent, and directed by these agents of the state, that I will name, in this comment to your article, though I don't name all of them.

These people both elected and those who are staff who are not elected, who constitute and also serve the business interests, the realtors, and developers, the monied and propertied interests. These far right extremists serve, those of wealth, and they hope to make more money by virtue, in part their actual approaches and attitudes, policies and deeds and actions, their allocations, and the actual threadbare programs that they dole out to their favorite providers to administer to the homeless. I judge them to be such extremists because of, their inhumanity and precisely for their total lack of humane concern for the most vulnerable poor people who must survive all the time, out of doors or in the shelters and programs here in Santa Cruz. But this is only one of the reasons that I deem and have decided that these officials are far right extremists, another reason is what they are doing to enrich themselves and their friends, while they work to eradicate the homeless from the City of Santa Cruz and while they scapegoat and demonize the homeless to distract from what they do with their other hand to enrich themselves, give their friends the best jobs and positions and funds instead of providing what the homeless need, or to prevent homelessness from happening to people.
These programs that are administered for the homeless are, for the most part degraded and dangerous for many reasons to the actual physical and mental health of homeless people, and which are always being funded and supported by these far right reactionaries, such as Donna Meyers, Renee Golder, Lee Butler (who is on city staff, who does everything these far right extremists want). There is long time policy maker and decider of what will actually happen to the homeless Susie O'Hara also on Santa Cruz city staff, and who formerly worked, I have been told, for the county overseeing similar policy that orchestrated policy that oppressed the homeless. No, Steve, although you were right in so many ways, you are too kind to these ruthless, uncaring people who care nothing for the well being of the homeless in Santa Cruz.

Their policy is NOT rudderless, as you characterize it, Steve. They absolutely consistently enforce, engender, and consistently employ a policy that effectively results in harassing homeless people, endlessly, and that demonizes homeless people, that allows them to be- and officiates, in effect for the homeless to be beaten up, or killed by the Santa Cruz police, or just ruins the credit records of homeless people, and keeps them poverty stricken by ticketing them endlessly.
These far right reactionaries, such as Richelle Noroyan have consistently worked hard to get homeless people on buses to be taken out of town (supposedly to their "homes" somewhere else), they consistently pay police and fire fighters and various security guard workers and their companies, overtime to take apart homeless camps with funds that the State of California provides to this city and county, that are meant to fund and provide emergency shelter and house the homeless, and provide actual services to them, like meals and showers, and most of all, more shelters and housing.
To say that these far right extremists who have absolutely deliberately, time and time again, refused to plan, and allow for more emergency shelters and low income housing and state funded housing to be built, instead decide to use the money to get the homeless out of Santa Cruz, to fund the destruction of camps, and in all ways divert the money to all things that deprive, and torture and harass the homeless.

The Big Money that infuses the campaigns of candidates like Renee Golder who take over the seats of fairly elected members of city council who were in fact more progressive and who actually attempted to provide safe places for homeless people to camp in this city, was used, in an indirect way as a weapon against our democracy and against our citizenry and against the homeless people, because the Big Money was what was employed to win the deceptive and corrupt Recall campaign. Yes, that Big Money was and is a far right extremist weapon in our times that is used to take apart our fair elections, and which is used to unseat our fairly elected representatives who were more compassionate toward the homeless. The deceptions and actual falsehoods reported to the public that supported the corrupt Recall campaign, and which deceptions were perpetuated by means of graphic layouts that insinuated falsehoods that the Sentinel depicted and used to mislead the public about the results of investigations directed by such city council members as, Martine Watkins, and Cynthia Mathews, for example, who instigated and called for these investigations against our fairly elected officials, constitute a typical tactic utilized by the Sentinel, and the far right council members which it supports, this far right extremist group of biased elected officials, such as Donna Meyers, Renee Golder, Martine Watkins, Cynthia Mathews, and unelected politicians such as Susie O'Hara, Lee Butler, Martin Bernal, city attorney, Anthony Condotti, and police chief, Andy Mills.
These people all pursue a consistent policy, which basically in truth amounts to a consistent policy which could be called, "Kill Off The Homeless!", or could be alternately named, "Get the Homeless Out Of Town!", which is really all about, take their survival gear, ticket them to the point that their credit is ruined. Their policies have not at all been, "rudderless", Steve.
The city policy has actually been very consistent over decades, they have refused to build accessible, up to date, efficient, and sufficiently commodious emergency shelters that will provide protections from disease and instead do everything in coordination with the same providers, like their friends in the Salvation Army, for example, and other groups, like the newly named, "Housing Matters" program, which used to be called, "The Homeless Services Center", which has a program under it, called, "The Paul E. Lee Loft", which fails in so many ways to protect the actual health of the clients who shelter in that program. But which does at least provide some shelter to people.
I have investigated many of the programs, and many of these facilities first hand. I have watched countless city council meetings in Santa Cruz where policy concerning the homeless has been decided, and I have researched the city's policies as they have been played out in the past and in the present.
I know the staff that hound the homeless and continually promote the programs that put homeless people on buses to get them out of town. Or, a favorite tactic for their programs is to make the clients wait hours, traditionally, to be able to board onto vans to be shipped over to a distantly located shelter, such as the facility which was used here in the winters for a long time, the Armory.
These on the far right are people who count on the public to not really know what is actually happening hour by hour, day by day to homeless people. They direct people to terribly derogatory propaganda videos such as the, Seattle's Dying" piece that Police Chief Mills directed the public to which was denounced by all respectable sources as a anti-homeless film.
These politicians are, very tricky and deceptive, for example in what they do. How the city program called, The Homeless Services Center, accidentally failed to apply for grants that supported the preparation, provision and the serving of meals in a long term program that happened out at the Homeless Services Center for years. This meal program provided two meals per day to homeless people but, it was stopped a few years ago. The attitude was careless at best in the way the city officials barely mentioned what happened to the program, and did not talk at all about the effect it had on homeless clients who relied on those meals. The attitude was like, "Oops! Too Bad, now we won't be able to feed you all, you'll have to go hungry!" The officials from the city and the Homeless Services Center actually claimed, officially, for the few people like me who wanted to know what happened to the meal program, that, "It was an accident". We were told that the person that they had recently hired from Georgia, just somehow failed to meet the deadline to apply for those grants that supported that meal program. The person who was hired to do that job, just somehow failed, to get the application in on time and oops! There went the entire meal program, the one solid meal program that the City of Santa Cruz actually subsidized for the homeless here. Again the attitude of the power brokers like Cynthia Mathews in the city was, "Gee, how awful and such a terrible accident!"
But it was exactly what Cynthia Mathews and Donna Meyers and Renee Golder wanted, to get rid of the homeless, any way possible, even if it means they suffer horribly, go hungry, and often die due to lack of services and a total lack of low income or state subsidized housing, and meals.
I did not hear anything about Phil Kramer being terribly upset about this program being defunded, "by accident".
These people who comprise the ruthless far right here in power in Santa Cruz, and their lackeys are pushing for the total gentrification of Santa Cruz, Steve. That is related to their actual policy about the homeless here in Santa Cruz.
Their plans, which really amount to land grabs downtown and in other areas of our city, grant large land areas and give great deals and permissions to build to well monied groups and entities from out of town, in conjunction with deals and dealings of the well heeled, of Santa Cruz.
These deals and development plans have been made in liaison with city staffers like Bernal and Butler, and others such as Tina Schull, former assistant city manager under Bernal, who is married to Zach Friend, and the other far right agents who are elected, such as David Terrazas. They are always pushing through their plans not approved by the citizens of Santa Cruz as much as chosen by a select few city staffers such as Bonnie Lipscomb and Mark Dettle, along with Mathews, Meyers, O'Hara, and those who are making good salaries, or who otherwise have money and property and who have spent years and decades depriving the homeless of services that they actually need, services that are core, such as many emergency shelters that are fully staffed, and well managed, giving the homeless always as little as they can possibly get away with giving and mostly working to eradicate the homeless population, one person at a time, from existing in Santa Cruz. Sometimes they are power brokers who sit on the County Board of Supervisors. Instead of going to serve the public, the funds are diverted to the police, and "new" city staff positions where the "new" staff (such as Megan Bunch, do exactly what the "old" staff tell them to do, in this case, Susie O'Hara and Martin Bernal telling Megan what to do), inventing time wasting associations like the CACHE, that pretend to really help the city, and homeless folks, by including all sides of the spectrum of citizen belief and get these citizens engaged, but it really ends up being another way of stalling and refusing to provide the necessary and sufficient full service emergency homeless shelters, hundreds of low-income housing units and hundreds- if not thousands of "free" housing units to qualifying citizens, that is, fully subsidized government housing units, and other needed social services complete with full staffing of those programs, shelters, housing programs and services.
Actually Steve, in this aspect of your article where you said something to the effect that the city appears to not want homeless citizens to reside here at all; that part you got completely right.

Good points--generally ignored in the February 23 5 1/2 hour long City Council blab-a-thon. And likely to be ignored again on March 9th.

One of my concerns has been the use of other ordinances--Public Nuisance, Unlawful Lodging, Closed Area, Parks Closed at Night, and Block the Sidewalk, e.g.--to accomplish the same effect as the Sleeping Ban sections of the current Camping Ordinance.

As someone who has offered the Homeless Legal Persons Assistance Project (HPLAP)for a decade, can you give us some sense of how much these ordinances have been used over the last two years?

As someone on Chief Mills' Advisory Committee, I assume you have access to the cop narrative on this issue, which also interests me. So please include that in your response.

And you've been on the Board of the ACLU as well. So can you give us a picture of how many and what sorts of cases have been brought to your attention as a HPLAP resource?