The Mean Streets of Santa Cruz

People here are proud to be different. The mayor wears bluejeans, the police prefer sushi to doughnuts and the university chose the lowly banana slug as its mascot.

Call them iconoclastic. Call them wacky. Just don’t call them hardhearted. Since a national coalition of homeless groups did just that last month, this seaside city of 55,000 has been engaged in a round of self-examination unseen since people here learned the Dalai Lama eats meat.

“I think this is an incredibly compassionate city,” said Mayor Christopher Krohn. The $2.23 million the city spends on social services, he said, is a larger portion of the city budget than in Berkeley, with its international reputation for tolerance.

If you go down to Pacific Street, however, and talk to Free Bird or Zoe--”just Zoe”--you get a different opinion. Zoe, 22, said she was ticketed for sitting on the grass. Free Bird, 21, has been on the road four years and he’s never seen a place like this.

The Wisconsin native said he’s been to San Francisco, Flagstaff, Ariz., Florida, and too many other places to count. “Santa Cruz seems like the worst,” he said. “It looks like they push the homeless around to satisfy the people with money.”

So who’s right? Maybe both sides are. If you go by the homeless office--yes the homeless have an office here, donated by the city--or talk to the homeless’ police officer--they have a cop devoted just to outreach to the homeless, a man who was once homeless--you can’t help but be impressed.

“In L.A., do you have a homeless services officer?” the mayor demanded. “And this is in the ‘meanest city in the nation,’” said Emily Reilly, the vice mayor.

But there are also stringent anti-camping, loitering and panhandling laws that even some civic boosters admit are harsh. One law bans sitting within 10 feet of a business entrance. It used to be 50 feet. Those are the kinds of things that led the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty to rank Santa Cruz the seventh-most punitive city in the country in dealing with homeless people.

“I don’t think it’s a mean town. There are some mean laws,” said Paul Brindel of the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County, a social service advocacy group. “It’s kind of a schizophrenic relationship we have with people in or near poverty.”

That’s because even though the city government has long been known for its progressive policies, the people the officials represent are increasingly concerned about property values. Partly because of its closeness to the high-tech corridor in San Jose, and partly because the city is 97% built out, Santa Cruz has become the least affordable housing market in the nation. The median price of a home is $420,000, while the median income is $65,000. Only about 6% of the populace can afford a house.

Even employed people can have difficulty staying housed. According to Brindel, 35% of the homeless are working, 10% full time. “You can’t even get a broom closet for less than $500 a month,” said Mad Mike, who has a tent down by the San Lorenzo River. “Plus, they won’t rent to you unless you’re single, gay, politically correct and vegetarian. I got kicked out of one place for cooking sausages.”

His roommates ran out of the house at the odor of cooking meat, then held a house meeting and voted him out.

The politics of homelessness in Santa Cruz date to the ‘60s, when the hippies arrived, attracted by the beauty and the easy lifestyle of what was then a blue-collar retirement town.

Other waves of itinerants came in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The city estimates there are now 3,500 homeless in Santa Cruz County, of which maybe half are in the city. Only half of them can be accommodated in shelters and transitional housing.

After decades of dealing with them, long-timers can identify the various homeless subcultures by name, from travelers like Free Bird (young people bumming around the country on dad’s credit card) to the vehicularly housed (those sleeping in cars) to houseless (which is sort of like homeless) to the slightly pejorative term for the rest of us (the housed).

Homeless Had a Tent City

The relationship over the years between the housed and the un-housed has been characterized by spasmodic periods of openheartedness, followed by conflict. In 1992, homeless protesters blocked intersections to demand better treatment. In 1995, a tent city was established while the City Council benignly looked the other way.

But after reports of rampant drug dealing and overflowing sewage, it was shut down.

Today, the homeless are more or less institutionalized as a permanent part of the daytime landscape. To see how institutionalized, all you have to do is visit their office on River Street.

There, Larry Templeton, the charismatic, self-appointed captain of one band of homeless people, sits at a desk in front of butcher-paper sheets on the wall outlining the volunteer work they’re doing as part of an effort to show the community that the homeless are not wasted strands of DNA. The list of chores includes cleaning up the Costco parking lot. “Adopt a Highway” is listed, but Templeton, whose nickname Jumping Jack was earned as a Toughman brawler in the ‘80s, isn’t sure they’ll get a sign on the freeway. “The competition we have is the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts,” he said.

Templeton, who looks a little like Buffalo Bill in cowboy dress and flowing mustache, is best known around town for operating the latest homeless encampment along the river, Camp Paradise. It was so well run that they had electricity, operated a bike repair business and built a koi pond.

No issue demonstrates the ambivalence this city has about its homeless population better than the saga of Camp Paradise. It was illegal from the start a year ago, but the city didn’t find out about it until it had been in existence three months. After that, the city ordered the campers to leave. They didn’t. The city threatened to tear down the camp. It didn’t.

That’s how things stayed until the winter rains accomplished what the city could not bring itself to do. It washed the camp away. That night, Mayor Krohn went to the swelling river and helped evacuate campers.

“What is it about us not being compassionate?” Krohn asked.

The homeless got their office as part of a deal to keep them from rebuilding Camp Paradise. But one day last week, Templeton, who broke a man’s jaw in seven places during a bar fight before he gave up drinking, was thinking of going back on his word because local officials failed to show for a meeting.

“I’m not going to lay down for them again,” he thundered. He declared himself ready to gather up his friend Dirt Clod, whose Indian-style vest and headband made him look like an even harder-living Willie Nelson, and head back to the river.

Ken Cole, the city liaison to the homeless, was surprised to learn Templeton was angry. “I’ve always returned Larry’s phone calls,” he said.

A city official diligently returning phone calls from a homeless man, even one as impressive as Templeton, may seem strange, but that’s Santa Cruz. On the other hand, the city can’t bring itself to roll out the red carpet, which troubles Brindel.

“Is it wrong to have a sleeping ban if there are not enough shelters?” he asked. “The community action network believes it is.”

He understands the council’s hesitancy to take such a controversial step as allowing camping in the city. “We get beaten up by the housed people who are afraid hordes of homeless will come in,” said Brindel.

Krohn would like to put the issue on the ballot to let the voters decide.. “We’re tired of having to deal with this,” he said.

Developers say there are solutions. Over a period of decades the city laboriously bought up land on its outskirts to create a permanent greenbelt. Now hemmed in and built out, some say the city should allow building in the greenbelt.

But few want that. “People worked so hard, nobody wants to spoil it,” said Brindel. “We’ve created the most beautiful place in the world.”

Many cities would take the label of being among the meanest to homeless as a badge of honor. “I’m sure there are cities saying, ‘Rats, we wanted to be No. 1,’” said Reilly, who can quote obscure municipal codes and Pee-wee Herman with equal felicity.

Hearts and Minds in Conflict

Not here. Here, they remain ambivalent, lodged between compassion for the unfortunate and distaste for the repugnant.

Recently, a citizen called the mayor to complain about an ordinance being considered by the council that would make changes to the sleeping ban. It would allow up to two weeks of camping in designated parks while the campers worked on the parks.

“She said she doesn’t want any ordinance allowing sleeping,” Krohn said.

“Then she said, ‘And what is it about us not being compassionate?’”