A tent camp floods at the benchlands of San Lorenzo Park in Santa Cruz in December 2021. (Stephen Baxter — Santa Cruz Local file)
Key takeaways
- Many unhoused people and advocates have pushed back against recent efforts to clear homeless camps across Santa Cruz County, while some housed residents said they want more enforcement.
- Enforcement against homeless camping remains uneven in unincorporated Santa Cruz County areas and in the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville in policy and in practice.
- County staff are crafting a new policy that tries to assess camps in unincorporated areas more objectively, and allows some camps to stay.
SANTA CRUZ >> While outreach and public health are supposed to guide how authorities deal with homeless camps, unhoused residents and their advocates have said the rules are enforced unevenly and arbitrarily throughout Santa Cruz County.
“There is a huge variety in policy,” said Athena Flannery, a member of Santa Cruz-based Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom, during a June meeting of Santa Cruz County’s Mental Health Advisory Board. “Police across the cities follow completely different policies and do not hold to any specific policy.”
Flannery and others have pushed back against sweeps this summer on Coral Street and in the Pogonip in Santa Cruz, and on the Pajaro River levee in Watsonville.
Led by Santa Cruz County’s Housing for Health Division, county staff are now trying to standardize camp outreach and management in unincorporated county areas.
In April, staff published a draft policy about how and when a camp can be dismantled. It tries to prioritize connections between unhoused people and resources — and would let some camps remain. A new policy is expected by June 2025.
The City of Santa Cruz should also consider creating more specific rules for camps, said Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer.
Housing Matters, the largest homeless services provider in the City of Santa Cruz, faced heavy criticism for its request to city staff to dismantle homeless camps near its Coral Street campus in June. The sprawling camps made some employees and shelter guests feel unsafe, Kramer said, and the blocked sidewalks make the street dangerous for pedestrians. The police now conduct sweeps on Coral Street about every seven to 10 days, he said.
“We’re against encampment clearing overall, in general, full stop. And yet we needed, wanted and asked for the city to take some type of action to create safe, walkable, passable, unencumbered sidewalks.”
—Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer
Troy Mason, who camps in the Pogonip, said Santa Cruz police and city staff have moved him 10 times in the past seven years. Each time, he lost most of his possessions.
“Part of the reason we do encampments is that we’re around people that we trust, and look out for each other. And now they want to destroy that,” Mason said. “It’s physically strenuous moving your things when you’ve got to move all the time.”
New state and federal rules to clear homeless camps
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that governments could enforce public camping bans, overturning a lower court ruling that shelter beds must be available when camps are dismantled. The following month, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that directed state agencies to follow Caltrans guidelines for clearing homeless camps. He encouraged local governments to do the same.
Under Caltrans guidelines, camps can be removed with 72 hours notice, or immediately if there is an “imminent health risk.”
Many Santa Cruz city and county elected leaders have said the court ruling and the executive order have not changed local approaches to homelessness.
But some Santa Cruz police have cited Gov. Newsom’s order. A man stood with bags of his belongings in a city parking lot next to the Downtown Santa Cruz library on Sept. 24. A police officer drove up to him and told him through the car’s speaker that he couldn’t loiter.
“Governor Newsom just passed a law that we can actually just remove you,” the officer told the man. The man started to leave and the officer drove away.
The homeless population has fallen from a peak in 2013, and the number of shelter beds has increased in Santa Cruz County in recent years.
- About 1,850 people in Santa Cruz County are homeless, and 80% live in tents, vehicles or on the street, according to the 2024 Point-in-Time count completed in February.
- The county has about 345 shelter beds, and the City of Santa Cruz has two managed camps with space for up to 165 tents.
- The city also runs a 24-hour safe parking program at the National Guard Armory with space for 12 to 20 RVs, and a nighttime safe parking program on city lots.
More than 80% of the homeless people surveyed for the 2024 Point-in-Time count were living in Santa Cruz County when they became homeless. Of those people, nearly two-thirds were county residents for a decade or longer. Researchers have said that across California, lack of affordable housing is the top cause of homelessness.
Developing Santa Cruz County policy on homeless camps
On Sept. 10, Santa Cruz County supervisors adopted a resolution to “use all available tools to address each unique situation and reduce homelessness in a compassionate way.”
“The most humane way to remove encampments is to focus on connecting residents to permanent housing,” the resolution stated.
The resolution didn’t create any rules, but it may help guide a separate, developing county policy for encampments that is expected by June 2025. The policy, modeled on one in Detroit, aims to help county departments coordinate on camp outreach and sweeps, and create objective criteria to trigger cleanups.
Currently, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office tries “to address encampments as quickly as possible in our jurisdiction, so they do not pose hazards for the people living there or the ecosystem around them,” Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ashley Keehn wrote in an email. Residents are given at least 72 hours notice, she wrote.
Under the developing county policy, not all camps would need to be removed, said Robert Ratner, director of the county’s Housing for Health Division.
“Unfortunately, what I see around the country is that it’s not often a health and safety analysis, it’s a visual dislike analysis,” Ratner said. “So action is taken based on appearance rather than a real thoughtful analysis of health and safety impacts.”
Under the developing county policy, the Sheriff’s Office, firefighters and county environmental health staff would evaluate a camp based on the amount of garbage and biohazards like syringes, the availability of bathrooms, potential fire risk, and pedestrian safety, according to the draft policy. People who live in camps with fewer health or safety hazards may not be moved.
“Every person I talked to in the county doesn’t think it’s helpful just to close the camp down and have them come back or they just move somewhere else,” Ratner said.
Health Services Agency staff who run the county’s syringe services program noted that homeless camp sweeps reduced encounters with program participants and opportunities to lessen the spread of disease, according to a county staff report.
County behavioral health staff typically visit encampments before sweeps to connect residents with social services. Under the developing policy, county staff and contracted nonprofit workers could continuously reach out to encampment residents across the unincorporated county, forming relationships well before sweeps are considered.
Caseworkers that visit encampments could help people get an ID, a mail address, phone service or health care. “These are all things that could, indirectly over time, help people on a path to housing,” Ratner said.
For some homeless advocates, change can’t come soon enough.
“The violence from the police departments has increased over the last two months exponentially,” Flannery said at the June mental health board meeting. Although shelter beds are sometimes available, they often are inaccessible for people with pets or personal belongings, Flannery added.
County leaders have pointed out that city governments, not the county, are responsible for the response to camps in the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville.
People camp near Coral Street and the railroad tracks in Santa Cruz in 2020. (Kara Meyberg Guzman — Santa Cruz Local file)
Santa Cruz city camping rules
Santa Cruz city law states that public camping is illegal if there are beds available at local shelters. Although the City Overlook shelter at the National Guard Armory and the 1220 River St. Transitional Camp sometimes have openings, there often aren’t enough beds for all the people living on the street, Kramer said.
“Environmental, public health, and safety concerns related to encampments are the primary prompt for cleanups,” city spokesperson Erika Smart wrote in an email. “Mitigating wildfire risk and ensuring safety in our open spaces are a top priority in summer months,” she wrote. “The city offers shelter to all of those living in the encampment who are interested.”
City leaders have cited falling levels of homelessness as evidence that strategies to connect people with housing are working. From 2023 to 2024, the city’s homeless population fell 36% as homelessness increased in other parts of the county.
Some housed city residents say that encampment removal is not only necessary — it needs to be stepped up.
Melissa Kreisa lives next to Jessie Street Marsh, not far from Ocean View Park. For the six years she’s lived there, camps with up to six tents have repeatedly popped up in the marsh. She’s said she’s seen fires in the area and has safety concerns.
“It’s supposed to be a protected area, and we’ve got all that — people living, trash, people going to the bathroom — in a fragile ecosystem?”
Tents and campers downtown have also deterred people from visiting her art gallery across from Trader Joe’s downtown, Kreisa said.
Enforcing the law
Kreisa and her neighbors have repeatedly asked city leaders to clear the camps in the marsh. Currently, city staff clear camps weeks after a complaint, she said. “In a perfect world, it’s like 24 hours max,” she said.
Once one camp is gone, another is not far behind, she said. “If nothing’s addressed, it’ll just continue to be this whack-a-mole. Get one out, get another one in,” she said. “I don’t know what the answer is.”
Santa Cruz city staff may adjust its approach to camp clearing in the Harvey West neighborhood as it plans a new program funded by a $4 million state Camp Resolution Grant. The money, awarded in April, is meant to assist local governments in removing homeless camps and placing people into shelter or housing. Housing Matters outreach workers are set to coordinate with city employees to help connect camp residents to social services before camps are cleared.
Housing Matters has faced criticism from unhoused residents and advocates for its role in requesting more Santa Cruz Police sweeps around its Coral Street campus.
Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer speaks at a groundbreaking event for a Housing Matters housing project on Coral Street on Sept. 17. (Housing Matters)
After emails surfaced in June of Housing Matters CEO Phil Kramer thanking city staff for “creating a more welcoming and safe Coral Street” by removing tent camps, Kramer confirmed that he has asked city staff to conduct more frequent cleanups around Coral Street.
He said he made the request “knowing that to create clear sidewalks for pedestrian access, that meant that people camping on those sidewalks would need to move, be required to move, be ordered to move — and recognizing that there wasn’t, in many cases, another alternative location for them.”
Kramer acknowledged that many of the people displaced have nowhere to go. “It’s awful,” he said. “It’s traumatizing for the individual.”
Kramer said the Encampment Resolution program is an opportunity to try new strategies for clearing camps in a compassionate and effective way.
But that doesn’t solve the larger problem of sweeps, he said. “What’s the solution? More places for people to sleep across the county.” People need “well-funded and resource-rich” sanctioned camping sites with enough capacity for all unsheltered residents, Kramer said. Without funding or community support, he said, that’s difficult to achieve.
Kreisa, the resident near Jessie Street Marsh, said she’s supportive of more safe sleeping sites, but wants them away from downtown or residential neighborhoods.
“Everybody deserves help, right? And I want to be part of a community that does that. But when it’s destroying your parks and your neighborhoods and your best communities, it’s ridiculous,” Kreisa said.
Flannery, the homeless advocate, said many people have run out of options. “The problem is that these people don’t have anywhere else to go, so they camp out somewhere,” Flannery said at the June meeting. “A lot of people are on the edge of getting housing,” she added. “They just are trying to get by that night or that week.”
Unhoused people often camp near the Pajaro River in Watsonville. Authorities dismantled some camps there in July. (Stephen Baxter — Santa Cruz Local file)
Watsonville homeless response policy
In Watsonville, city leaders are also recalibrating the way its police and city staff handle homelessness.
There was a 60% increase in homelessness in the city from 2023 to 2024, according to a recent report. Watsonville city leaders have planned an Oct. 5 workshop to explore options and gather opinions from residents and service providers.
The meeting will take place 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 on the top floor of 275 Main St., Watsonville.
What do you think?
Read more
- How many unhoused people have found homes in Santa Cruz County? — June 13, 2024
- Rising homelessness in Watsonville prompts new strategies — March 26, 2024
- Report finds fewer homeless residents in Santa Cruz County — Aug. 4, 2023
- Is homeless services spending effective in Santa Cruz County? — May 5, 2023
Santa Cruz Local Editor Stephen Baxter contributed to this report.
Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Santa Cruz Local is supported by members, major donors, sponsors and grants for the general support of our newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Learn more about Santa Cruz Local and how we are funded.
Jesse Kathan is a staff reporter for Santa Cruz Local through the California Local News Fellowship. They hold a master's degree in science communications from UC Santa Cruz.
