Quick Take
Local activist Kevin Norton says the City of Santa Cruz might be onto something much bigger than initiating a neighborhood microgrant program. He says the program – approved May 12 – could help rebuild neighborhood connection, an urgent and underreported issue in our community. Norton points to the high levels of dissatisfaction among American parents, and argues that rising loneliness, car-centered development, economic stress and declining social trust have quietly eroded the “village” Americans once relied on. He believes immigrant communities may hold important clues for how to rebuild and argues that rebuilding neighborhood connection is urgent.
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On May 12, I sat in a quiet Santa Cruz City Council meeting and watched a small but meaningful idea take shape.
Three councilmembers led this proposal to give small grants directly to neighbors who want to build community — block by block, relationship by relationship.
The city council approved the idea for further development. It’s called the Neighborhood Microgrant Pilot Program, and it will reside within a possible new office of well-being, under the city manager’s office. The amounts of possible grants have not yet been shared publicly.
The need for the grant points to a quiet trend: Santa Cruz is becoming harder to hold together. Nearly 40% of Santa Cruz City residents surveyed in 2024 said they were considering leaving because of the cost of living. Our county also experienced one of the sharpest population declines in California last year among larger counties, while school enrollment continues to fall faster here than anywhere else in the state.
Many residents feel isolated, exhausted and financially squeezed.
A microgrants program, expected to start in 2027, is straightforward: small grants would go directly to residents who want to strengthen community life in their neighborhoods. City staff will bring their recommendations to the council in the coming months, and nothing is guaranteed yet.
But picture it: $300 to a Westside block association for a block party. Or neighbors on the Eastside using $500 to start a backup childcare circle — or $600 to a neighborhood group that wants to work alongside city staff to install a traffic circle and mural to calm traffic in their neighborhood — the kind of informal organizing that used to exist naturally and has quietly disappeared. Small things. Real things. The kind of things that make a neighborhood feel like one.
Or picture an $800 grant going to a group of Eastside residents who want to explore community land trust models for their neighborhood — seed money for the meetings, the research, the legal consultations that turn a conversation into an organized effort, one that can then compete for state and local matching funds.
No, this program won’t replace the safety net — but it could repair some of the holes.
It struck me that the three women spearheading the effort are all from immigrant backgrounds and are all mothers.
Vice Mayor Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson is a first-generation immigrant from Iran. Councilmember Sonja Brunner grew up in a second-generation German, Mexican American home. Councilmember Gabriela Trigueiro is a fourth-generation Mexican American whose family first settled in Sacramento. Three women, three different stories, one shared instinct: that neighbors need each other, and that sometimes a little money can unlock a lot of connection.
The old saying goes: It takes a village to raise a child.
We’ve all heard it. But for many Americans, the village has quietly disappeared.
What’s left is the nuclear family on one side and the big institutional systems — schools, hospitals, social services — on the other. In between? Declining rates of religious participation and social trust in neighborhoods.
The microgrant program won’t rebuild the village on its own. But it could help a few people remember how important the village is to all of us.
It now takes two wage-earners to raise a family in the U.S., and not surprisingly, American parents consistently rank as the least satisfied in the developed world. It doesn’t help that so much of modern life happens alone: alone at work, alone online, alone behind the wheel. Our cities are built around cars instead of people.
A windshield is a terrible place to build community.
And there is the internet. Social media keeps us loosely connected to people across the country while many of us barely know the neighbors two doors down. The internet is also changing how we relate to each other.
A community organizer on the Eastside of Santa Cruz put it plainly to me: UC Santa Cruz students and young people are too stressed out from the cost of living to even get to know their neighbors.
When you’re barely keeping your head above water, doing the sometimes awkward and hard work of building community gets pushed aside.
The result is a country that trusts itself less and less. In the early 1970s, 46% of Americans said most people could be trusted. Today, only 26% say the same. That kind of social trust isn’t abstract — it’s linked to crime prevention, higher levels of happiness, more upward mobility for low-income families and better outcomes for children. We are losing something real.
We are building more housing in Santa Cruz, yes. But we also need more people involved in civic life and neighborhood problem-solving.
The three women spearheading this understand what community used to look like — and what it could look like again. Immigrants are among the best teachers we have.
Here’s something most people don’t know: Immigrants live, on average, six to seven years longer than native-born Americans. Researchers call it the “Healthy Immigrant Effect,” or the “Hispanic Paradox.” Part of the reason is because only the healthiest tend to take the trip to America in the first place, but also it’s due to their stronger social networks, more cohesive families and deeper ties to their ethnic communities. Those things help protect them — against stress, against illness, against the particular loneliness of modern American life.
To me, the Neighborhood Microgrant Pilot Program is a small attempt to recreate the kind of close-knit community life many immigrant families once relied on, by making it easier for people in Santa Cruz to form meaningful social connections.
If this idea resonates with you, do something. Imagine what kind of neighborhood connections you wish existed — and tell the city council what a few hundred dollars and a handful of motivated neighbors could make possible.
Here is a simple draft of an email you can modify.
Then do something slightly radical: Introduce yourself to the person two doors down. Invite them over for dinner.
Kevin Norton lives on the Westside of Santa Cruz and has a background in public health.