How Pastor Dan and Watsonville’s Westview Church became a center of homeless help

Sixty-nine-year-old Margo Loehr has fed the Watsonville homeless on the Pajaro River levee for decades. But after her church ended support for her soup kitchen program, she needed a new venue. She tried the Salvation Army, but it turned her down. Discouraged, she quit bringing food to the levee for a while. Then, a chance meeting with a Presbyterian church member led Loehr to believe their pastor would host her soup kitchen. 

“I saw Pastor Dan and said to him, I heard you are open to doing the soup kitchen,” she said of the chance encounter seven years ago. “He said, ‘That wasn’t me, that was the other Presbyterian church. But we would love to do it.’”

Little did Rev. Dan Hoffman, 57, know that the new soup kitchen at his Westview Presbyterian Church would eventually transform the sleepy church into a support center for the homeless.  

In late 2022, Roxanne Wilson, Monterey County’s homeless services director, and Loehr approached Hoffman with an idea beyond merely feeding breakfast to the unhoused: Let’s build 34 microhomes as a temporary shelter in Westview’s parking lot.

A shelter in Watsonville is much needed. The Salvation Army’s local emergency shelter closed in April. Last year, Santa Cruz County’s annual point-in-time survey estimated 421 homeless individuals live in the town, a 15% increase from the 2022 count. Soon, reinforcement work on the levee that protects Watsonville will begin, displacing an estimated 150 folks currently encamped there. 

At first, I said, ‘No,’” said Hoffman. “I didn’t want a camp behind my church — no one would come.” But then he went to Santa Barbara to see a new shelter that is the model for the proposed village behind Westview. “I said [to Wilson], ‘If you can do that, I’m on board.’”

Hoffman said the DignityMoves-built, 34-room shelter managed by the County of Santa Barbara and Good Samaritan was well-kept, safe, and clean — a place for traumatized people to get on their feet and dream again. 

Like the Santa Barbara location, Westview’s shelter will provide more than just a place to sleep. “The site will have 24/7 counseling services,” Hoffman said. “The residents can bring their partner and pets.”

Hoffman brought the proposed plan to the church’s senior leadership at a summer retreat a year ago, and they unanimously agreed to move forward. Monterey County will fund the $8 million project with a state grant, about $5 million of that money for construction, and the remainder for social services and management of the site. Construction starts in July, with the first residents moving in in December.

“Margo came to our church with a deep love for the homeless on the levee, and that love has become contagious,” Hoffman said. 

From Loehr’s humble soup kitchen, Westview has only expanded its practical charity.

Though Hoffman gives Loehr all the credit for Westview’s increased social justice engagement, the pastor’s roots in serving underprivileged communities helped him recognize her talent. 

At 23, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Davis, Hoffman interned with a church for the Hollywood Urban Project in Los Angeles, a program to help young people escape gangs, he said. After his father died of cancer, he saw a child get shot in the head, and he quit in frustration and took a construction job.

After pounding out some anger with hammers and nails, Hoffman entered a seminary. Then he returned to the Hollywood Urban Project as its director, where, among other duties, he mentored 15 kids. Of the 15, he said, seven were shot, and two died during his time at the nonprofit. He came to Santa Cruz County 23 years ago to work at a church, then a hospice, and arrived at Westview 14 years ago.

“I was a white pastor leading a Japanese congregation then,” he said. “The demographics have changed. The seniors of that time passed away.”

David Kadotani, 68, joined the predominantly Japanese Westview church in the 1980s. Today, he is the church’s treasurer, with a very different demographic: many more Latino, white and Black people, and far fewer people of Japanese ancestry.  

“Since we’re an agricultural area, the younger Japanese generation moved to the Bay Area or Southern California for better opportunities,” said Kadotani. “Now it’s a little bit of everyone, which is nice.”

More volunteers, more service

It’s 8:30 a.m. Monday. Margo Loehr returns to the church kitchen after serving breakfast to about 20 unhoused people at the levee. Knee problems forced her to rest on a chair. She watches Maria Gonzalez, 54, prepare a hamburger macaroni casserole for Tuesday’s breakfast at the levee. 

“This work makes me feel my heart,” Gonzalez said as she stirred a roux on the industrial-sized gas stove. “I want the people to have a good meal.” 

Gonzalez has been serving meals for 20 years. After cooking the church’s next-day breakfast service, she will help serve lunch a few blocks away at Loaves and Fishes.

It is late morning. Unhoused men arrive at Westview and linger in the parking lot, waiting for the various services they have come to rely on Mondays at Westview.

Adam Henderson arrives with a mobile shower hauled from Santa Cruz. He is the first partner to arrive in a procession of daily and weekly services offered at the church. 

Henderson, 53, works for the Association of Faith Communities. Henderson is tall and has a nonchalant gait. He said he played basketball professionally in Taiwan. But after returning Stateside, he’s been in and out of work, sometimes living on the streets, coping with the wear and tear on his body from sports. Henderson stays at a different shelter each night in Santa Cruz, waiting for permanent housing.

He sprays the shower stall with disinfectant, then hands a towel to Jose Zarate, 61, an unhoused farmworker from the levee.

Zarate emerges from the shower, his first in two weeks, refreshed, relieved and smiling. Tonight, he’ll return to the levee. But, he said, getting more than a few hours of rest is challenging — other people and animals disturb his sleep. 

Across the parking lot, Jerry Guerrero-Ledesma, 27, a services coordinator for the Harm Reduction Coalition, sets out a table with supplies: latex gloves, sanitizer, trash bags, wound-care kits, condoms, water, Gatorade, dog food, lighters, clean glass stems for smoking narcotics, test kits for fentanyl and Narcan for overdoses. 

“We hand out supplies for folks to help keep them safe. We’re grateful the church allows us to do this,” he said. “Harm reduction should not be political or controversial. It’s basic health care.”

Inside the church gymnasium, medical workers from the county’s Homeless Persons Health Project (HPHP) have set up their weekly assessment of walk-ins. HPHP offers wound care, behavioral health counseling, vaccines, and connections to public medical and substance abuse services.

In a chapel office, Sandra Varela, 49, tends to her tasks as the coordinator for a program called Watsonville Works! She helps eligible unhoused people find employment and housing. Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County (CAB) has closely partnered with Westview since the pandemic. Varela said resources are often limited for those in need because individuals lose IDs and birth certificates living outdoors. She tries to help them obtain those documents. 

“Unfortunately, we don’t have money to help the undocumented,” she said. “But Watsonville Works! has no barriers. Anyone can join and make some money.”  

Felipe Ponce, 55, a part-time CAB employee, is the crew leader of a “Transitional Work Experience” for Watsonville Works! 

Three mornings each week, the unhoused travel to Westview’s parking lot for a chance to work on Ponce’s crew picking up trash for the city and county. Only nine people — the work van’s seat limit — can participate.

Crew leader Ponce was born and raised in Watsonville. When he was 10, his grandmother ordered the child to get a job collecting strawberries so he could afford shoes and clothes. He was in and out of juvenile detention as a teenager. As an adult, he was incarcerated between bouts of homelessness. Ponce said his experience helps him relate to the folks he’s trying to help. He turned his life around in 2010. He’s been sober for 14 years.  

“I try to give them a positive way forward,” said Ponce. “But it’s tougher now for the homeless. We don’t have shelters here, and the jails and drugs have turned in the worst way — fentanyl is in everything.”

According to Varela’s tally, the crews have retrieved 621 pounds of trash and 70 syringes off the streets of Watsonville since October. They also removed mattresses, tires and furniture, filled 826 garbage bags and disposed of 25 syringes for the county. The temporarily employed sanitation workers receive a $25 gift card for four work hours — insufficient to afford housing. Still, perhaps Westview’s much-anticipated temporary shelter will give hope to a few.

After a six-month stay at one of the tiny homes, Hoffman said residents will transition to permanent housing. If everything goes as planned, the unhoused cleared from the levee will eventually get permanent housing. But, after the $8 million grant is spent, the outlook for the temporary dwellings at Westview is unclear. Folks staying at Westview’s village would need continuing services. 

Hoffman said he expects Santa Cruz County to take over funding in about two or three years – that is if the cash-strapped county can find the money to keep the project going. The county faces a budget shortfall next year.

Regardless, Loehr said she’ll keep helping folks on the levee as long as possible.

“That was a big deal to have a village behind your church,” said Loehr. “We grew from a little kitchen to what it is now, and I’m very proud of that. The church is phenomenal. The people here are very accepting.” 

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.