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For more than 15 years, the City of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Police Department have systematically targeted unhoused people by raiding their campsites, seizing their belongings and discarding them as if they have no value.

I write this letter not as an outsider, but as someone who has lived through it — a person who has experienced homelessness in Santa Cruz for over 30 years, and an advocate who has fought for the rights and dignity of our unhoused neighbors for the past 15 years.

Time and again, I have watched city workers and police officers arrive at campsites with trucks and trash bins, throwing away tents, clothing, medicine, personal photographs and irreplaceable items. Over the years, this deliberate destruction has added up to well over $100,000 in stolen and discarded property — property belonging to human beings who already have so little.

Despite public outcry, lawsuits and promises of reform after the closure of the Ross camp, the same cruel pattern has begun again. This is not a matter of public health or safety — it is harassment, pure and simple, carried out with malice and justified through bureaucratic doublespeak.

Homelessness is not a crime. Poverty is not a moral failure. Yet the way this city treats its unhoused residents speaks volumes about its priorities. Instead of offering stable shelter, mental health care, and real pathways to recovery or housing, the city continues to spend taxpayer money tearing down what little people have managed to build for themselves.

Every time a tent is bulldozed or a blanket thrown away, the city strips another person of hope and humanity. I ask the citizens of Santa Cruz to look closely at what is happening on our streets. These are your neighbors, not nuisances.

These are people — veterans, elders, workers, and families — forced to survive under constant threat from the very institutions meant to protect them. It is time for accountability, compassion, and change. The city must stop these sweeps, replace them with real solutions, and treat every person — housed or not — with respect and dignity.

Michael Sweatt

Homeless advocate, Santa Cruz