As the cool winter air blows across the Pacific Ocean, bringing a chill to our coast, we hunker down and cling to those we love. We seek shelter from the elements and gather together and have feasts that cause us to loosen our belts a notch and enjoy company from those we love.
For hundreds of unhoused people in Santa Cruz County, shelter, food, connection and a sense of purpose is often hard to come by. But over the past 33 years, the Homeless Garden Project has helped provide these essential human needs to Santa Cruz County’s unhoused population.
The Homeless Garden Project started in May 1990 as an organization called the Citizens Committee for the Homeless, which built an organic community garden on Pelton Avenue in Santa Cruz to provide employment opportunities for homeless residents.
Since then, the organization has taken on a new name, closed its original farm and a 3.5.-acre property near Natural Bridges State Beach and is exploring three sites for a possible permanent home. The project also runs a community supported agriculture program that sells weekly boxes of organic produce, along with retail stores in downtown Santa Cruz and Capitola that sell a variety of goods and gifts, all made by the project’s unhoused clientele.
During the holidays, many of the crops, flowers and herbs that the project has grown throughout the year are dried and brought to the organization’s offices in downtown Santa Cruz, where they are transformed into wreaths, candles and other decorations that are put up for sale.
All of the work, from growing the produce to running the retail shops, is done by homeless residents, known as trainees, as a way to help them gain the skills and experience necessary to find a path out of homelessness.
The project offers paid employment opportunities for 22 full-time positions for up to a year, along with three, two-week employment trials at any one time. Funding comes mainly from donations, along with sales from the farms and retail and online stores, as well as money from local governments.
Trainees are paid for 20 hours a week of on-the-job training. The program pays people so they can stabilize their finances and afford basic needs, while training them to be ready to enter the job market once they graduate after a year. “It reinforces the basic premise of how we work together in the United States,” said Darrie Ganzhorn, the Homeless Garden Project’s executive director. “You get paid for your work.”
Over the past seven years, 93% of the project’s trainee graduates have found employment or another stable source of income and 84% have found housing, Ganzhorn said.
The project also works to help unhoused residents feel like they are connected and contributing to their community through programs such as Feed 2 Birds, which gives excess food grown at the project’s farms to local agencies working with low-income people and those who might not have access to organic food.
Trainees find these acts of helping others incredibly meaningful, especially since many unhoused people feel a deep sense of disconnection from the broader community, Ganzhorn said.
“The people in our program are so different than the stereotypes about homelessness and some of them are the most generous people,” she said. “One of our trainees says, ‘We’ve all been humbled by life.’ There’s something really special about the resilience and the generosity of our trainees.”
George Skanderup has been working for the Homeless Garden Project for the past six months after hearing about it from some friends who graduated from the program.
Skanderup said he lost his job at Zero Motorcycles in 2018 and later had his vehicle and most of his belongings stolen by an acquaintance. He ended up at a homeless shelter at the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park before moving to a city-run tent camp on River Street, where he’s lived for the past four months.
After losing his previous job for being late to work too many times, Skanderup said he’s focused on arriving on time to his job with the Homeless Garden Project. “I’ve made it a point at this job not to be late, ever,” he said. He recently had an interview for another job at the Armory and hopes that between the two jobs he can earn enough to afford for more permanent rental housing.
Working at the project’s farm near Natural Bridges has been “uplifting,” said trainee William Desarno. “Being here, putting my hands in the soil and just getting in touch with Mother Earth has just been a huge, huge plus for me,” Desarno said.
Desarno had been unhoused for six months before he moved into New Life Community Living, a Santa Cruz sober living facility and treatment program, five months ago. He graduates from the sobriety program this Sunday and hopes to be accepted into the local electrician’s union.
Santa Cruz’s Homeless Garden Project has been an inspiration for other communities that are looking for creative ways to empower their unhoused residents. Ganzhorn says since January 2021, the Homeless Garden Project has fielded 95 inquiries from people and groups in other parts of the country looking to start a similar program.
The organization is now working with a program called Everyone Village in Eugene, Oregon to create a manual for how to start a similar project that organizers hope can become a national model.
—
FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this story story contained incorrect information about the status of the Homeless Garden Project’s plans for a farm at Pogonip. The Homeless Garden Project is still looking for a permanent home.
—