Quick Take
Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, takes issue with a previous Lookout op-ed on homelessness, saying it misunderstands many facets of the issue and was dehumanizing toward unhoused members of the Santa Cruz County community.
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Craig James’ recent op-ed, “How Santa Cruz’s homeless efforts are making things worse for the city … and for the homeless,” is a beautiful example of the class blindness that helps make ending homelessness impossible.
I first shared meals with the homeless outside the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston on March 26, 1981, just a month after Ronald Reagan took office. There were so few homeless people in Boston that there was no place for them to seek a free meal, so at their suggestion we started sharing food every day.
Something happened in the United States that caused the number of homeless to increase from a handful of people to nearly 1 million struggling to survive unhoused today. One of those things was the increase in housing costs while wages failed to keep up. Another was the cuts in funding of public housing and other social services and the diversion of the savings into the bank accounts of military contractors.
I find James’ way of talking about the homeless dehumanizing.
This is dangerous at a time when the economic crisis is pushing up the number of people living without shelter and when local governments are announcing harsh plans to force adults into state conservatorship and others into jails.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order soon after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case in June 2024. The order announced the clearing of encampments on state property and the withholding of state funding from cities that failed to remove their homeless camps. “We have now no excuse with the Supreme Court decision. This executive order is about pushing that paradigm further and getting the sense of urgency that’s required of local government to do their job,” Newsom said.
President Donald Trump signed his criminalization and internment of the homeless “excessive” order, officially called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” just days before Lookout published James’ op-ed. It now looks like there might be federal funding for mental facilities and prison camps and the deployment of the National Guard.
James repeats the myth claimed by people in every American city – that homeless people gravitate to their community because their town offers better services. I recall asking for the location of a soup kitchen in Cleveland, Ohio, in the winter of 1986. It was 5 degrees above zero outside at noon. The man directing me to the meal noted that the homeless travel to Cleveland from all over the country because they hear that the city offers better services.
Cities don’t “put their homeless residents on buses to Santa Cruz,” as Jame claims, unless those homeless people have family or a job waiting for them here. I have helped people get bus tickets out of Santa Cruz and other cities and there always needs to be a job or family member waiting for them. For years, the principal thing the City of Santa Cruz paid for on behalf of the homeless was a free bus ticket out of town.
James also seems to misunderstand the point-in-time count question, which was, “Were you housed in Santa Cruz at the time you became homeless?” With Santa Cruz being America’s least affordable rental market, it is no surprise that 86% of those who were interviewed had lost their housing while living in Santa Cruz.
What does Craig think a homeless person would gain by lying about becoming homeless while living here? A free blanket?
We have guests at our town clock meals who attended local schools like Bay Elementary, Branciforte Junior High, Harbor High or Santa Cruz High. You can overhear them talking about their time in school with their former classmates who are also homeless. Some of these people might have been James’ classmates.
James also outlines possible solutions that we already know from 45 years of direct experience will never work. He says, “Cities should coordinate so that resources and policies are the same everywhere,” but they already do coordinate across the state, creating anti-homeless policies at forums held by groups like the League of California Cities.
He calls for coordination among all homeless service providers and says that the state should provide equal funding to every city so people won’t travel to the better-funded communities. This solves a problem that resides only in James’ head.
San Jose just passed a law against its homeless. Homeless people who reject three offers of shelter will be eligible for arrest for trespassing on public land after the San Jose City Council voted in June for a policy change councilmembers hope will encourage unhoused people to trade in their tents on sidewalks for beds indoors.
Santa Clara County has one shelter bed for every three unhoused people. There are 10,711 homeless people in Santa Clara County, according to a point-in-time count conducted in January. But there are only 3,454 beds across 38 temporary shelters and programs.
Dehumanizing people in this manner smacks of Hitler’s Germany. Are we going to let this happen, or will we be brave enough to resist?
Keith McHenry is a co-founder of the global movement Food Not Bombs and the author of several books, including “Hungry for Peace” and “The Anarchist Cookbook.”