Tag archives: homeless

In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic unfolded, Montecito neighbors started noticing a significant uptick in homeless individuals on Coast Village Road, traveling along the tracks, and encampments began mushrooming along the freeway. I contacted Luis Alvarado from Santa Barbara County’s Behavioral Wellness Homeless Outreach Team, and we started walking the tracks and outreaching. […]

My last article talked about the climate crisis as an example of market failure. “Free” markets in fact require a vast government infrastructure: Laws, enforcement, courts, established financial systems. And a system to rebalance extreme wealth inequalities. Homelessness results from a lack of the latter mechanism. Wealth begets wealth. This can happen directly as wealth […]

The “Holy Grail” of abandoned homeless sites was tackled on August 30 in a cleanup being done by a team of homeless workers who have been enlisted by Earthcomb, the brainchild, and business of Andrew Velikanje. The site, located at the end of South Kellogg Avenue in Goleta, is the second in Heal the Ocean’s […]

Amid a 120-day cleanup of homeless encampments, the question becomes: What happens on Day 121? You might not have noticed Joe — or maybe you did but kept your eyes on the road in front of you. Joe, a senior citizen, would panhandle at numerous off-ramps around Santa Barbara, spending 16 years sleeping on the […]

To use a well-worn phrase, the homeless (“unhoused,” “unsheltered,” “houseless”) are a blight on our fair city. It’s not that we don’t have sympathy for these folks, but when they are met on the street most of us steer wide of them. I’m not insensitive to the homeless, but from what I’ve seen on State […]

The following is an open letter to the Coast Village Association and the property owners of the Country Mart and Starbucks strip:  We need you to step up now and help your businesses and customers stop enabling homelessness. Help us solve it instead.   We are writing to you as Montecito residents and founding members of […]

The COVID pandemic was surely a challenge for just about everyone in Santa Barbara and all around the world, but some communities were harder hit than others. Not so much here in the city or Montecito but consider what it must have been like to go through the 15 months of lockdowns, surges and protocols […]

In last week’s issue, Gwyn Lurie’s “Editor’s Letter” decries what she calls “incendiary language” in my recent column, calling it a “mistake” to have even printed it in the first place. I re-read it and though found it somewhat provocative, I believe that at no time does it reach the incendiary stage (450 degrees Fahrenheit, […]

When we started the Hands Across Montecito project late last year, we counted 31 individuals living unsheltered along our railroad tracks and on beaches. We took an approach now touted by Bakersfield: work cases individually, on a by-name basis. Each person’s needs are different, so you have to find the solution that works for them. […]

Community members that are experiencing homelessness could often use a path to help guide them from the street into a home. Since the early 1980s, People Assisting The Homeless (PATH) has been helping individuals, veterans, and families requiring assistance find their way to long-term housing solutions.  “We do that by really focusing on moving people […]

In 2020, the Montecito community witnessed a growing population of unsheltered individuals in the area. Encampments mushroomed and became quite visible. Bicycle thefts were up as were incidents of trespassing on private property. I started visiting the encampments in Montecito with Luis Alvarado, a case manager from Homeless Outreach Services at Santa Barbara County’s Behavioral […]

An abandoned homeless camp surrounded by trash, bicycle parts, car batteries, flooded tents, and more became an eyesore on the “Graveyards” beach in Montecito, at the base of the cliff below the Santa Barbara Cemetery. In a recent newsletter, Heal the Ocean says they received a call about it from a concerned citizen last week, […]

Inside the kitchen at Santa Barbara Rescue Mission a team of masked and gloved volunteers prepare six dozen turkeys – washing each bird, stuffing them with onions, garlic, and herbs, basting them with butter and seasonings – all in preparation for the most important dinner of the year, the Christmas Feast. It’s a time-consuming process […]

In the middle of another heat wave, it’s 95 degrees near the beach in Montecito and everybody has moved indoors. Everybody except our small group trailing behind Luis Alvarado, a determined homeless outreach specialist with the Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness Department who has come to Montecito to make contact with as many homeless people […]

Monday morning at 6 am, a crowd of 30 gathered at a church in Santa Barbara’s Eastside to perform a homeless census count. This is part of the Hands Across Montecito Project, started by the Montecito Association in response to concerns of large encampments growing along the tracks, encounters on Coast Village, thefts, and fires. […]

Since 2009, the Organic Soup Kitchen has been the only organization in Santa Barbara County to deliver nutrient-rich soup meals to low-income families and homeless individuals. What started as a homespun effort to provide healthy meals to the homeless in local parks, has gradually become a successful, self-sustaining enterprise with its own kitchen that works […]

In the past several days, the so-called coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic has spread into California and registered its first infection in Santa Barbara. On March 13, Santa Barbara’s Organic Soup Kitchen announced it is expanding its delivery service to help people stay in and stay healthy during the health scare. “We produce soup and deliver […]