Quick Take
Santa Cruz’s new downtown library and affordable housing project has hardly been without controversy — but after years of debate, the building is rising, writes affordable housing advocate and former mayor Don Lane. Now the question is less about who supported the project and more about what we want this new civic space to become. With its expanded Life Literacies Center, free resources and room for people to gather, Lane believes the library could become downtown’s living room – and a place to bring a divided community together.
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If you’ve been in downtown Santa Cruz lately, you’ve certainly noticed the ongoing progress in the construction of the new downtown library and affordable housing project. I realize not everyone has been on board with this effort, but it is coming to fruition, and our community will soon have an amazing new, first-class library and 120 new publicly owned, rent-restricted apartments for lower-income households in a great location.
I’ve been involved in the creation of this project for about 10 years — and I initially got interested because of the opportunity to build community-owned affordable housing. However, I became more and more excited about the new library as I learned more about its possibility as a community hub.
First of all, great libraries bring people together.
Meetings, events, book talks, story time for little ones, student collaborations and more. A strong library serves as a vital resource for those who don’t have access to the full range of media and technology that many of us now have in our homes or on our phones. They also provide a place to get research assistance, including historical and genealogical work. And they are – as they have always been – a place to check out books for free.
And, they offer connection.
I recently learned that an important function of our current library – and one that will grow much bigger in our new building – is that it offers a space for the Life Literacies Center. This center, which I first tuned into as part of my work to address the needs of unhoused people in Santa Cruz, works with folks to navigate the challenging path to obtaining rental housing in this housing-stressed community.
It currently operates out of a modest conference room in our current library, and it has grown to encompass other volunteer-based projects assisting people with basic needs, including the following groups and services:
- Friends Outside
- Homeless Garden Project
- County benefits outreach
- Encompass Downtown Outreach
- Santa Cruz Poetry Project
- WINGS (help with acquiring new ID and other vital documents)
- Housing Matters
- People First shelter programs
- English language classes
With the opening of the new library, the Life Literacies Center will expand and have additional facilities and resources, including smaller one-on-one meeting spaces and better technology tools.
With this new understanding of the possibilities of the Life Literacies Center, I became a cheerleader for this piece of the library and have helped raise nearly $250,000 to build it out and equip it once the outside structure is complete. You, too, can help put the finishing pieces together in our new library if this sort of work interests you.
Perhaps this bringing together is the larger role this new library can play in downtown Santa Cruz.
There has been plenty of disagreement about this project, including the opposition expressed through Measure O. Those disagreements are part of our community’s story, and they shouldn’t be erased. But as the building takes shape, the question before us is no longer simply whether we agreed with the project. It is what we want this new piece of downtown to become.
I hope the library becomes one of the places that helps us answer that question.
A downtown needs more than buildings, businesses and housing. It needs places where people can come together without having to buy anything. Places where a child can hear a story, a student can find a quiet place to work, a newcomer can learn English, a resident can get help navigating our complicated affordable housing system, a poet can share their work, or someone who is struggling can sit down with another person and figure out what comes next.
That is what libraries do. They create a kind of civic center – not because everyone comes there for the same reason, but because people from very different parts of a community can find a place there.
Santa Cruz is changing, and our downtown is changing with it. The new library won’t solve all of the challenges facing downtown, and it shouldn’t be expected to. But it can help give the new downtown something it will need: a center of gravity, a place of connection, learning and welcome.
For me, that might ultimately be the most important thing about the building now rising downtown. It isn’t simply a new library. It is an opportunity to create a place where Santa Cruz can continue to find itself – and where we can find one another.
Don Lane is an affordable housing advocate, an ice cream lover and the former mayor of Santa Cruz.
