How did we get to the homelessness problem of today and what is next? 

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Last weekend, dozens of people took part in the March to End Homelessness in downtown Santa Cruz. The march expressed a goal shared by almost every resident of our community – homeless or housed. 

But what was it? Was it a protest march, and, if so, against what authority and with what demands other than the somewhat amorphous goal its title suggests?

This is a complex issue and one Lookout has regularly taken on. However, to truly understand where we are today, we need to have some idea of where the problem came from. Then, we can look at what might be done to reduce it from its current crisis level.

Here’s an interesting fact we often forget: America did not have a significant homeless problem in 1970. In that year, President Richard Nixon ended the poverty programs of the 1960s. Those programs had helped ameliorate some of the economic problems faced by the lowest fifth of the U.S. population following the end of World War II. In place of federal programs supporting child care, housing, senior meals, after-school programs, job training and the like, the Nixon administration started a new initiative that delivered roughly the same amount of federal funding to cities and counties, but it based funding on population and put it under local control. 

Some communities, particularly large cities, used that funding to continue to fund human care programs, but others shifted the funding to other community priorities.

In Santa Cruz, the city council made what I consider bad choices. It chose to replace water pipes in wealthy neighborhoods rather than support low-income residents. It also directed some of the funds to build a luxury hotel downtown. The hope was to get additional transient occupancy tax funds the hotel would generate. 

The then-conservative council also believed the hotel would address poverty by providing jobs for custodians and service workers. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) killed the project in response to local complaints, which I participated in. Luckily, some of that money went back to a rehab for seniors program. But, the point is, the money was poorly spent.  

When the progressives took city hall in 1981, a lot of this funding went to human services, but it did not specifically target low-income housing or drug and alcohol programs. Homelessness was beginning to appear in Santa Cruz and other U.S. cities, but was not yet the crisis we see today. 

Then came Ronald Reagan. In 1985, during his second term as president, Reagan ended the revenue-sharing program Nixon had established 15 years earlier. That was the beginning of the serious homeless problem in the United States. 

There had been some homelessness in earlier years, but in 1985, with the collapse of the social safety net, homelessness rose all over the country. In Santa Cruz, the city council replaced the revenue-sharing funds with a new 5% admission tax on all events requiring a ticket; however, it did not raise enough money to solve the growing homeless problem.

With new zoning and building code restrictions in Santa Cruz and across the nation, the production of new affordable housing became more expensive and the federal provision of Section 8 housing subsidies from the government almost disappeared. By the end of his second term, Reagan’s administration was providing about 10% of the Section 8 housing vouchers Nixon’s team had provided. 

It also didn’t help when, earlier, as governor of California, Reagan closed the state mental health hospitals without providing any funding for local alternatives and released thousands of mentally ill people to the streets of California.

While we are beginning to turn the corner on the problem of insufficient new housing in California and, specifically, in Santa Cruz, little of the new housing, no matter how deeply affordable based on subsidies of public land and financial donations, will ever be available to a homeless person without an income, means or job. 

And that won’t change even if we build lots of 18-story monstrosities in our community.

In addition, dramatic changes in education also contributed to the homeless problem. As middle schools and high schools across the country began to focus on preparing young people for college, vocational education, which had prepared millions of young people for careers directly out of high school, was allowed to atrophy.

In my high school in the 1950s and 1960s, students could spend three hours each day learning to be an auto mechanic, cook, hair stylist or shop worker right after graduation. Those programs disappeared in favor of college preparation courses, even though perhaps half of the students in the school were not planning to go to college. So we were graduating significant numbers of students with no education plan and no marketable skills. 

The work ethic in America took a solid hit with so many young people basically unprepared to enter the job market at the end of their compulsory education.

Drug, alcohol and mental health crises are often mentioned as a cause of homelessness.  However, in my view, these are more a result of these underlying educational and economic problems than the initial cause of them – although once established, these issues do become a significant part of the problem of addressing homelessness.

So it is in this context that the City of Santa Cruz,  and other cities around the U.S., finds itself with significant numbers of people who do not make enough money to rent a home – even a ramshackle one – and, instead, live on the street in their vehicle, under a blanket or, increasingly, in a tent.

For years, the city directed the police to remove people sleeping in well-trafficked public areas like Pacific Avenue and city parks. Based on complaints from residents, they also had periodic sweeps of the Pogonip and other Greenbelt areas and creek beds in various neighborhoods. But as one police chief noted, it was like a game of whack-a-mole. Homeless campers were removed from these areas in periodic sweeps but then they simply resettled in a different area. 

Finally, in the past two years, the City of Santa Cruz has begun to actually offer alternative housing or shelter to people it removes from areas where we don’t want people camping. 

This happened publicly in fall and early winter 2022, when the city cleared the illegal Benchlands campground on the banks of the San Lorenzo River, thankfully just before a huge storm would have put the entire campground underwater. Social workers and police offered alternatives, but unfortunately, only about a third of the campers accepted offers. Many returned to sleep outdoors somewhere else in the city and a few left town.

One can only speculate, but it appears that many of those who refused to accept the alternative housing or shelter offered them have drug or alcohol addictions and don’t want to accept a housing solution that requires them to follow any rules –  for example, not having the right to go out and look for a drug connection in the middle of the night.

I believe our city is doing a good job managing amid the sad circumstances history has given us. Last year we saw a decrease of between one-fourth and one-third of our homeless population in the city. That is a bright spot.

But the problem is hardly solved. 

People discuss the morality and practicality of mandatory drug, alcohol and mental health commitments for those who appear unable to manage their own lives successfully; however, there is over a year-long waiting list for those who want a rehabilitation program. Without significant funding increases from the state and federal government, such discussions are academic at best. 

We have a long road to make up for those cuts of the Nixon-Reagan years.

The good news is the state and the county stepped up with more funding to address the homeless issue and this has allowed some increase in the number of shelter and rehab program beds, but both government agencies are currently facing huge budget deficits and even the inadequate funding we have enjoyed might not exist in coming years.

The state and federal government have the wealth necessary to address these issues, but current tax structures have allowed wealthy corporations and people to escape from paying their fair share of the cost of managing a modern society. 

Until we address that issue, I don’t think we will see real success in addressing homelessness on the streets of our community.

And, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how many people march to express their desire to see the homeless problem ended.