Reflect and imagine a more equitable community at Picture This: Reimagining Home and Belonging event. Join Housing Matters in the Sequoia Ballroom at Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz on Sunday, April 7th for an evening of thoughtful radical reimagining with expert speakers who will talk on the themes of home, belonging, land, and place. 

The event, the launch of Housing Matters new Community Conversations Speakers Bureau, will be an inspiring and interdisciplinary experience that informs and energizes the audience, shifting the way people think about homelessness in Santa Cruz County. The Community Conversations program provides space for historically marginalized people with lived experience of homelessness to share their insights with the community through storytelling. 

“This event is the culmination of thoughtful planning to bring the stories of lived experience of homelessness to the larger community,” said Mer Stafford, Chief Impact Officer at Housing Matters. “By reimagining home and belonging, we want our audience to come away with a sense of hope. We must imagine the community that we wish to have and then join together to make it so.”

The event begins at 5 p.m. with a reception featuring live music, a cash bar, and light snacks. The speakers will begin at 6 p.m. For the complete speaker line-up, visit the event page.

General admission tickets are $30/person. Group and student discounts are available. Advance tickets can be purchased on the Housing Matters website and there will be a small number of tickets available for purchase at the door. All proceeds from the event directly supports Housing Matters programs and services that help stably house hundreds of people in Santa Cruz County each year.  

Speakers and presenters will share unique perspectives as they engage with the themes of home, belonging, land, and place. A selection of speakers include: 

The interplay of science and medicine is among the many important conversations and talks that will be addressed. Dr. Robert Ratner, Director of Housing for Health of Santa Cruz County and Karen Kern MPH, Deputy Director of Behavioral Health at the County of Santa Cruz will have a conversation around the inextricable link between health and mental health and how housing and community are at the heart of all aspects of wellbeing in their talk, “Prescribing Home”.

From the scientific community Rachel Nelson, PhD, the Director and Chief Curator of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Nelson will discuss art and abolition in her talk, “Radically Imagining: Radical Imagination”. Dr Nelson said, “by addressing the intersection with housing justice, we will be reminded that the work of abolition is everywhere — in art, transit, healthcare — every single sector needs to be transformed.”

In addition to scientific viewpoints, several visual and auditory artists will be presenting. Alexandra the Author, a Santa Cruz-based musician will be performing her song “Sanctuary”, an acoustic set with guitarist Tim Brady focusing on themes of home and belonging. The experience of homelessness can feel helpless and lonely, Alexandra said, “you can’t always mend a broken heart, but you can definitely feed an empty stomach,” reaffirming that we can be hopeful in imagining solutions to homelessness. 

Art is a powerful means of activating ideas for both the artist themselves and the audience that views them. Abi Mustapha, Housing Matters Artist-In-Residence and Thomas Sage Pedersen, a Santa Cruz-based musician, composer, podcaster and community organizer, are no strangers to utilizing art as a tool for creating conversations around social justice and inspiring action. Mustapha and Pedersen are widely recognized in Santa Cruz for their work facilitating the Black Lives Matter mural with Santa Cruz Equity Collaborative outside Santa Cruz City Hall.

Mustapha will be discussing the interplay of white supremacy and the lineage of housing inequality, no matter a person’s color. “The audience can expect to learn something new and possibly sit with some discomfort about how many of us have benefited from the historical systems of oppression leading to homelessness,.” said Mustapha. “By looking back at the history of the origins of our current issues, we will become better equipped to consider thoughtful solutions.”

Pedersen, an interdisciplinary artist, executive coach, and co-founder of Ignite Nexus is known in the Santa Cruz community for founding and hosting the Speak for Change podcast which aims to promote positive and lasting change in our local and global communities by providing the space to discuss timely social justice issues with a broad panel of special guests from different professional backgrounds. During his talk at Picture This, Pedersen will explore topics around empathy, tolerance and courage when addressing homelessness and the systems and policy decisions that are motivated by both fear and love. By fully understanding the psychological factors that influence decision-making, he is hopeful that answers and opportunities will emerge that will facilitate transformational change.

A cornerstone of Picture This is to affirm the importance of the stories of lived experience of homelessness… Unpacking and rejecting generalizations about the experiences of homelessness is essential. The Community Conversations Speakers Bureau speakers, Alyson Greene, Mace Crowbear, Mary Falk and Toni Rodriguez each provide starkly different personal accounts and experiences. Showing how harmful it is to stereotype people with experience of homelessness. “I hope by sharing my struggles we can ensure that younger LGBTQ people are seen, heard and understood,” said Greene. Each journey is a testament of resilience and strength with the intention that the sharing of their story will create a more understanding and compassionate community. 

Mary will present her poem, “One Honest Poet” which she wrote on the theme of questioning belonging and hope.

Mace Crowbear is an indigenous speaker who will explore cultural re-rooting and rehabilitation through culture in her talk, “Rising Above the Ashes, Bringing in the New Dawn”. “I am a part of this event because so many of us do not want to look at those experiencing homelessness in our community. We have to face it all and see all of our community members as human beings without titles before we can grow,” said Crowbear.

The evening will conclude with a guided visualization of what Santa Cruz County could look like when everyone has a home, led by Mer Stafford and Tenzin Chogkyi. This exercise reinforces the notion that despite the scale of the issues that surround homelessness, the audience has taken part in advocating for solutions by envisioning a better community and participating in the event.

Learn more on the Housing Matters website.