As day center set to close, unhoused residents worry about a future without showers, mail and phone charging

Toni Rodriguez has no idea where he’ll charge his phone and take a shower once Housing Matters closes the day services program at its Coral Street campus in Santa Cruz’s Harvey West area.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said the 37-year-old unhoused resident. “Nobody acknowledges the elephant in the room, which is poverty.”

With the decision to close the only public, drop-in day services facility in the county, access to showers, restrooms, mail service, rest areas and basic amenities will end next year for an estimated 50 to 80 unhoused people who use the services daily. 

It’s not just unhoused residents anticipating the loss of this facility. Social service providers and city officials say reestablishing these services, no matter how basic they are, is a tall task because there are few other suitable locations with the right infrastructure. 

“The biggest challenge is finding a building that has appropriate facilities in a neighborhood that will tolerate the neighborhood impacts,” said Evan Morrison, executive director of People First of Santa Cruz County, which runs the city’s largest homeless shelter at the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park. “I don’t think that exists.”

Rodriguez said basic hygiene services like showers and bathrooms are “something that people really take for granted,” pointing to an outbreak of the highly contagious bacterial infection shigellosis among the unhoused population last year. The disease can be prevented with hand-washing and restrooms, which are currently available to people who are not staying in a Housing Matters shelter during daytime hours. Bathrooms will no longer be available to the public come the end of March.

Housing Matters said the day services facility needs to close to prepare for the 120-unit permanent supportive housing development Harvey West Studios, which is expected to open in summer 2026.

Morrison said that while it’s a “tragedy” that many homeless people will lose access to basic services, he understands why Housing Matters is making the move. He agrees that providing amenities aimed at those still living on the streets on the same site as permanent housing for those who are trying to exit and stay out of homelessness is unlikely to mesh well.

“You’re asking [tenants] to walk through an area where all the things they’ve been trying to avoid about the streets are right in front of their faces,” he said, adding that he’s worked with numerous people who said cutting contact with the unhoused population was the only way for them to stay stably housed. “It wouldn’t be smooth and would absolutely threaten some people’s ability to stay housed.”

Rodriguez, an independent activist who spoke at a Housing Matters Community Conversations event last year, said he saw this coming as soon as he saw construction at the Coral Street campus in late January, when Harvey West Studios broke ground. He said he immediately believed that it meant the area would be under constant police patrols, or access to day use services would change.

Morrison said he’s confident that People First — and, more broadly, other homeless advocates and service providers — would step up to help provide services if the necessary funding and infrastructure are available, but that’s a big “if.” 

He said a possible way forward would be to provide services on a smaller scale, with individual organizations finding ways to provide basics like showers and mail for their own clientele. But that, too, would require a lot of money and coordination. He estimated that setting up minimal showers or a basic water system would cost around $100,000.

“We have a history of throwing stuff together and making it work,” Morrison said. “But we’re pretty powerless to make the building and the funding appear.”

County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said that the county recognizes the need for replacing these key services, but that there currently is no plan for what that would look like. The county contributed $280,000 to help fund Housing Matters’ day services, which the organization supplemented with funds from other sources. The organization reported slightly over $15 million in grants and donations in the most recent fiscal year, including more than $13 million in government grants. Hoppin said there’s still some funding left on the county contract that could be available for replacement services.

Hoppin added that the first order of business for the county’s Human Services Department is to replace the mailboxes for homeless residents enrolled in benefits like Social Security, cash aid or food assistance, since they have to verify that they are eligible twice a year and will need to have access to mail to maintain those benefits: “They’re looking at standing something up pretty quickly so that there’s as little of a gap as possible.”

Larry Imwalle, the City of Santa Cruz’s homelessness response manager, said that talks among the city, county and Housing Matters about replacing day use services are still in their infancy, but that the city is committed to playing a role in finding alternatives for the “critically important” services.

Given that state and federal resources frequently go to permanent housing and shelters, rather than amenities for those who are living on the streets, Imwalle said resources for day services will likely have to come from the community: “I don’t think the solution necessarily has to be one provider or one location,” he said.

Those who use the services nearly every day say they need to push to keep the services going. 

Laura Smith and William Norman, two friends who live in the Pallet-brand prefabricated shelters on the Coral Street campus, say it’s concerning that there are no other day services providers in the county. As shelter residents, they will continue to have access to the services except for the mail room.

“These things are huge,” said Smith, specifically mentioning device charging. “For some people, that’s how they keep in contact with their families.”

Norman spoke about the harsh weather conditions come winter and how rest areas make a big difference: “Sometimes it’s the only place we have.”

“The only way [to get replacement services] will be to have somebody advocate for us, or for us to come together and say we need something,” said Norman. “If we don’t, we’re going to be hurt pretty bad.”

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