Quick Take
On Coral Street in Santa Cruz, the tents are disappearing — but the people who lived in them have not. As Housing Matters prepares to open 120 units of supportive housing, weekly street sweeps are escalating into daily displacement, writes Kevin Gallagher, who works with the unhoused on Coral Street. A community, he says, cannot call itself compassionate while pushing its most vulnerable people out of sight. Homelessness is not erased when we clear a sidewalk; it is simply moved somewhere we don’t have to see it. He urges city leaders – and all of us – to do better.
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If you drive down Coral Street in Santa Cruz today, you will probably notice the distinct lack of homeless people camping out on the street. You might feel relief that you don’t have to weave past individuals, bikes, dogs and tents as you drive down the block.
You might assume the disappearance means the people who used to be there are now in shelters, or housing or somewhere better.
You would, unfortunately, be wrong.
Since January 2025, the city has done street sweeps every week. A street sweep is when all people camping out on Coral Street must pack up their belongings and leave. Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) blocks off the street at both ends with police cars and crime-scene tape. People are not allowed to enter, and if anyone refuses to leave, their belongings are disposed of, and they are subject to law enforcement action.
After that, the street remains clear for a while. But later that day, or the next day, people start to trickle back until the street looks much like it did before the sweep.
And then another sweep happens the next week. Rinse and repeat.
These sweeps began in the context of the building of 120 studio apartments on the Housing Matters campus. Housing Matters leaders have been clear that they ask SCPD to conduct these street sweeps in order to create a more sanitized environment for the eventual residents of Harvey West Studios.
Now, the sweeps are increasing.
Two weeks ago, there were two street sweeps instead of one. Last week, the city erected large fences to block off the sidewalks along the entire block. Afterward, the city confirmed that SCPD would be engaging in daily enforcement to prevent people from camping on the street or sidewalk.
Homeless people have precious few places in Santa Cruz where they can simply exist, without having that existence demonized or criminalized. Coral Street has been one of those places for decades.
Unfortunately, as Housing Matters transitions further into the supportive housing game, its leaders seem to have lost their appetite for the unglamorous, often unforgiving work of supporting people experiencing homelessness.
Housing Matters closed its day services (daytime use of bathrooms, provision of meals, mailroom, etc.) in April, reduced the size of its family shelter and recuperative care center (a temporary shelter for homeless people recovering from surgeries or other serious medical issues), and now it is escalating this policy of forced removal of people camping on Coral Street.
It astounds me that Housing Matters, a homelessness service provider, is not only OK with this happening, but its leadership is actually asking for it to happen.
How does it make sense that, in the name of providing safe housing for some, we are willing to forcibly remove others?
Indeed, whenever street sweeps happen, there are also city outreach workers present, connecting with people, offering assistance. This is great.
But it does not justify the policy of aggressive displacement. Providing someone with resources doesn’t give you license to mistreat them. The city provides some great support to the homeless community, and I feel grateful for that when and where it happens. But that doesn’t make what’s happening on Coral Street acceptable.
We have a deeply paternalistic mentality toward homelessness in this country – if we see fit to stoop down and help homeless people, but they refuse our help, well then they are no longer our responsibility, and deserve whatever comes to them.
Sadly, we still judge a person’s worth based on their material circumstances. If someone is wealthy, we assume that they earned it. If someone is homeless, we assume that it is due to poor moral character or bad decision-making. We tend to ignore the larger social, political and economic forces that come to bear on all our lives.
Daily, I work to remain aware that a string of bad things could happen to me, and I could end up homeless. The same is true for most of us.
And that is, frankly, terrifying.
So we tell ourselves the lie that homeless people chose their life, because that means we can choose otherwise. Unfortunately, this lie prevents us from imagining how those of us with homes and those without are actually not so different.
When we imagine that someone else living on the street is not our problem, we deny the other’s humanity, and in doing so deny our own.
When I walk down Coral Street and see the emptiness, fences and police cars, I don’t feel safer or more in control. I feel a sense of grief. Not because I want people to be camping out here. But because I know those people who are no longer here are still outdoors somewhere.
I know that here on Coral Street, the experience of homelessness isn’t being improved, it is being erased.
The persistence of homelessness is not a personal failure, it is a communal one. It is a mark of shame on us all, and a sign that we have collectively failed in our duty to care for one another.
I hope we and our elected officials will find the strength to engage with that shame and actually do something about it, rather than continuing to avoid it at the expense of those who are already so marginalized.
We all deserve so much better than this.
Kevin Gallagher is a mental health clinician who works on Coral Street. He serves the low-income and homeless individuals of Santa Cruz city and county.
