Quick Take
Housing Matters announced that its $5 million Live Oak Landing interim housing program was officially open and would be welcoming participants immediately, stating that construction finished months ago but there had been final permitting and occupancy approval delays. Advocates are hopeful that the project can help take people off the streets, but also expressed frustrations over the lack of transparency with its delayed opening.
Housing Matters, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit whose mission is to partner with individuals and families to create pathways into permanent housing, announced this past week the opening of Live Oak Landing, a 20-bed interim housing project at the site of a former motel on Soquel Avenue.
Officials said the first batch of residents began moving in late last week.
The opening comes months after the project’s original target opening of Oct. 1, 2025. Housing Matters said that though construction was finished months ago, there were delays in obtaining final permitting and occupancy approval.
Located near the Highway 1 Soquel and 17th Avenue off-ramp, the complex has single- and double-occupancy rooms, with a few that are fully accessible to people with disabilities, said Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer. It’s also fully secure, with key fob-only entry and security 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because the rooms do not have their own kitchens, staff will deliver three meals a day from the organization’s main kitchen on Coral Street, Kramer said.
The program was made possible with a $4 million grant from the California Encampment Resolution Funding, or ERF, program. The grant was given to the City of Santa Cruz, who then partnered with the county and Housing Matters, to expand outreach efforts and housing connection staff for the Coral Street and Harvey West encampments.
The original proposal, which was drafted in 2023, laid out a plan to add 20 temporary micro-units to Housing Matters’ Coral Street campus. In the end, however, Kramer said the organization did not have the real estate to increase capacity in that facility’s existing shelter program, which led to the purchasing of the old Santa Cruz Inn.
To purchase the inn, Housing Matters used half of the EFR grant and $500,000 of Measure K sales tax money given to them by the county, although Kramer said the actual cost of the property ended up being closer to $5 million. Housing Matters invested some of its own funds.
This left the other half of the ERF grant for outreach efforts. Kramer said Housing Matters has been operating the ERF program for over a year now, “not waiting for the purchase of the property to start working with folks.”
The organization hired a program manager and some staff and personnel who have been reaching out and connecting with people who are in the Harvey West neighborhood and on Coral Street.
Housing Matters developed a list of around 120 people it has been working with, said Kramer, and it already has the 20 people lined up to be the first occupants of Live Oak Landing. The length of stay for Housing Matters’ interim shelter programs is typically around six months, he said.
“The ultimate goal is to connect people with housing and supportive services and support them on their pathway to long term, stable, hopefully permanent housing,” Kramer said.
The main caveat to this length-of-stay aim is that Housing Choice vouchers, or Section 8 vouchers, have been frozen by the county’s housing authority. The vouchers can be used to rent with a landlord who agrees to participate in the Section 8 program, and the Housing Authority pays a portion of the rent directly to the landlord, while the participant pays the difference. The amount can exceed 30% of the household’s adjusted income in many cases.
Kramer said Housing Matters has been doing its best to connect people with other resources in the absence of Section 8 vouchers, mentioning examples like short-term rental subsidies or encouraging people to consider sharing a rental cost with someone else. One of the organization’s goals, he added, is that 90% of the people it helps house will be able to retain housing for at least a year or more.
Alicia Kuhl, president of the Santa Cruz California Homeless Union, said she has been persistent in asking Housing Matters why it did not open the project when it said it would. She said a lack of transparency from Housing Matters regarding communicating that there was a delay, as well as the delay itself, was very frustrating.
Part of the reason the delay was so hard for her to wrap her head around, she said, is because the people who camp at Coral Street and Harvey West, the area of Santa Cruz that Live Oak Landing is supposed to help, get swept nearly every Thursday by the City of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Police Department.
“It’s been frustrating that people have continued to lose their belongings on a weekly basis from the sweeps – things getting thrown away into the trash,” Kuhl said. “Unfortunately, because [Live Oak Landing] didn’t open when it should have, people were put in months more of harm. And it’s frustrating from an advocacy perspective because there was no transparency.”
She added that it was “irresponsible” of Housing Matters to not inform the community of the project’s delayed opening as quickly and as easily accessible as possible, mentioning that the organization’s website still said that the project was slated to open Oct. 1 of last year.
Kramer admitted that the organization might have been “overly optimistic in their construction projections,” hoping that the repairs, refurbishments and permitting process would be done in an expedited manner to open in October 2025. He also said that although there was no formal media release or public statement about the delays, Housing Matters kept its partners in the community and people it has been working with in its outreach efforts informed.
He added that if any advocates reached out to Housing Matters or inquired via its media contacts, which are himself and Mer Stafford, they would have answered questions regarding the project.
“We weren’t concealing anything,” Kramer said. “We certainly were hoping and eager to open as quickly as possible.”
Kuhl said it’s been difficult to contact Housing Matters organizers in the past over the phone, citing confusing extension options through its main phone line. She said she has often had to leave a voicemail after choosing an extension, making Kramer’s advice to call for information frustrating.
“When you’re dealing with that amount of money and you’re providing services to people, you need to be transparent to the people you’re providing the service for, [telling them] why it’s not available and when it will be available,” Kuhl said. “They need to take accountability for that and apologize, and not just say, ‘You could have called us.’”
Although there was a delay in opening Live Oak Landing’s units, Kramer said, the program will still run through 2029, which was the initial plan. He said there wasn’t a delay in operating the program itself because they have been doing outreach for the past year. He also mentioned that while the ERF funds will eventually run out, the program will keep running with financial support from other sources like county Behavioral Health.
Kuhl and other housing advocates expressed hope for the project’s future and the positive impact it could potentially have on the community now that it is open.
Evan Morrison, executive director of People First Santa Cruz, a nonprofit that operates homeless services in the county such as extreme weather shelters, said that service providers are currently experiencing a lot of roadblocks from difficult changes in federal and state funding that trickle down to local organizations. As such, he added, it’s a good thing that the government and service providers were able to come together to create a program like Live Oak Landing.
“The service providers I talk to are seeing an increased demand for services. The experience on the street seems to be that more people are experiencing homelessness, so it’s good that we’re providing more services, just in general as a community,” Morrison said.
Kuhl said she hopes that Housing Matters will be able to consistently fill every bed in Live Oak Landing with the individuals on Coral Street and Harvey West so that they can stop being targets of sweeps. She’s also hopeful that the people who stay there end up finding permanent housing, despite the lack of Section 8 housing vouchers being offered.
“I hope their stay at Live Oak Landing is short, sweet and helpful,” Kuhl said.
This story was updated July 14 to reflect that the City of Santa Cruz was the original recipient of the EFR grant. The city then partnered with the county and Housing Matters on the project.
