Xan walks along damp train tracks on the side of Depot Park. It’s 7:30 p.m. and the sun has long set in Santa Cruz. Dark clouds hint at heavy rainfall predicted for that night. She stops under the overhang of a rusted bridge and talks to friends living in a tent by the railway. She carries on with her nightly routine and looks for a spot to sleep.
Xan, who chose to be identified by a pseudonym, stayed at the Depot Park cold weather shelter to keep warm. The shelter was open from Jan. 5 to Jan. 9. After closing, those seeking shelter had no choice but to go back on the street. Xan has been houseless for 11 years, but with approaching freezing temperatures and heavy rainfall in Santa Cruz, living on the streets has been risky this winter.
The week of Jan. 5, temperatures were predicted to drop as low as 33 degrees Fahrenheit. In response, the County and City of Santa Cruz, as well as the City of Watsonville, organized with The Free Guide to open three cold weather emergency shelters at Depot Park, Santa Cruz’s Veterans Memorial Hall, and Watsonville Veterans Memorial Hall.
Xan told City on a Hill Press how grateful she was for the shelters.
“They were dry, I swear to God, they were really dry,” said Xan in disbelief. “Even when it was raining outside, they were dry.”
To establish the shelters, the county reached out to Evan Morrison, the executive director of The Free Guide, a non-profit organization that provides resources for the unhoused. The cold weather shelters are weather-dependent which means The Free Guide often has to open them on short notice.
“It was all last minute […] and I don’t know that anyone else would have done it if we didn’t,” said Morrison. “We do view the extreme weather shelters as saving lives.”
The County of Santa Cruz, the City of Santa Cruz, and the City of Watsonville decide the criteria for opening cold weather shelters. There must be two consecutive nights of 38 degrees or lower in the urban areas of Santa Cruz, two consecutive days of National Weather Service flood warnings within the urban services boundary, or an overnight evacuation order within the urban services boundary.
Despite the clear necessity for shelters to be open more often during the winter, there is insufficient state funding available to operate them. The criteria for opening the shelter was met again in the following days. However, the shelter was not reopened.
Temperatures remained under 38 degrees between Jan. 9 and the morning of Jan. 13. The County’s Public Information Officer, Jason Hoppins, said that the night of Jan. 8 they were over capacity and served a combined total of 109 people. The shelters have 40 beds each at the Watsonville and Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Hall, and 26 at Depot Park with a total capacity of 106.
“Decisions on when to establish emergency shelter[s] are made by the funding partners — [the] unhoused were not consulted,” Hoppins said.
Ava Ahlberg is a UC Santa Cruz student who worked at all three locations this January and found the shelter’s closure upsetting.
“It was just as cold as the night before and we had people begging us to be open and we just couldn’t,” Alhberg said. “The County wouldn’t approve it.”
Conditions for the unhoused remain dire as there is an ever-growing need for more shelters in Santa Cruz. However, providing them remains a difficult endeavor, due to a lack of funding through general fund tax dollars.
“Generally, the state favors spending money on permanent support of housing,” Hoppins said. “It’s actually cheaper than a shelter bed once you get a unit.”
Brent Adams, founder and director of the Warming Center Program, agrees that providing permanent housing is ideal, but in reality, there isn’t a push from Congress to implement it.
The Warming Center Program was founded in 2013 by Brent Adams with the intent to provide immediate relief and resources to the unhoused. In recent years, Adams has downsized programs due to personal circumstances, lack of funding, and the planned demolition of their current operating location on 150 Felker St.
“It’s a paradigm shift that happened from the federal government and it swept across the country and it’s still negatively affecting life on the street […] it’s called Housing First,” Adams said.
Housing First is a policy from a 2016 Senate Bill that required housing programs to approach decreasing homelessness by prioritizing providing permanent housing as the first step, waiving requirements and potential roadblocks such as sobriety, mental health, and financial stability. However, as it lacks clear guidelines, implementation, and funding from local and federal agencies, its effectiveness in communities has been criticized.
Adams argues that as a result, many people are going through a process towards housing that doesn’t exist. He describes the motto of Housing First as “feel-good jargon with nothing behind it.”
Adams believes that nonprofit and government programs are lacking because they mismanage funds and aren’t pressured by the community to improve. He thinks city-run shelters are headed in the right direction, but critiques these shelters for not doing “robust street outreach.”
Rasta, who chose to go by a pseudonym, currently lives on the streets and spoke on his experience of living in the cold of Santa Cruz. When asked, he said that he was unaware of the shelter activation.
“They say they hand out stuff like backpacks and tents and blankets, sleeping bags and stuff like that, but I don’t even know where to go,” he said.
Although the winter season presents many challenges to him, it’s not the only thing giving him trouble. Rasta said that even during cold and rainy weather, the Santa Cruz Police Department is “pretty gnarly” despite County advice for unhoused people to sleep in cars or tents.
“They just show up [and] cut the tent open,” he said. “They won’t let you get your phone, they won’t let you get nothing,” he said, snapping his fingers to demonstrate how quick people living on the streets need to pick up and go.
Adams believes that despite animosity between the government and nonprofit organizations, if they work together they are capable of great things. “All of these programs […] need to work hand in hand with a city-county plan,” Adams said. “We all fit like a glove.”
For more coverage on the unhoused community in Santa Cruz, read our other articles on the topic. Pogonip Encampment Braces for City Sweep, No Roof and Drenched: How the Unhoused Endured the Storm, What the Closure of the Benchlands Means for its Residents, or Houseless Community Displaced by Benchlands Flooding.
Editor’s Note: This story was written before the Jan. 30 Santa Cruz County approved an agreement to accept unanticipated revenue from the City of Santa Cruz, the City of Watsonville, and Medi-Cal Administrative Activities to financially support People First of Santa Cruz County (The Free Guide) to run the severe winter weather shelter pilot program from Jan. 1 2024 through March 31 2024.