Tag archives: homelessness
New Beginnings’ Safe Parking program turned 20 earlier this year, a milestone you need to celebrate. On the other hand, I wish it didn’t even exist in the first place. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be homeless people living on the streets or in their cars. The latter is what the Safe Parking program […]
Our group of 10 with morning bleary-eyed faces, meets at the Coast Village Chevron station and trudges down through the newly-rebuilt Butterfly Lane tunnel with its colorful murals. We emerge on the railroad tracks and begin searching from the Bird Refuge to Eucalyptus Lane. As usual, we find only a few people, but there are […]
The nonprofit New Beginnings has turned its focus toward ending veteran homelessness in the county by the close of 2025 through its Supportive Services for Veteran Families program that works to transition currently unhoused veterans back into stable housing and assist those whose housing situation is threatened. But in addition to putting its money where […]
Santa Barbara’s New Beginnings Counseling Center (SBNBCC) held its grand opening with a ribbon cutting reception on Friday, June 9, at its new location, 530 East Montecito Street, Suite 101. The event was well attended, with noted state and local politicians – Congressman Salud Carbajal (CA24), Senator Monique Limón, First District Supervisor Das Williams, District […]
When New Beginnings began serving Santa Barbara as a nonprofit half a century ago, providing confidential, therapeutic psychological testing, assessment, and counseling to low-income individuals and families in the greater Santa Barbara area was its core mission. Experienced masters-and-doctoral-level counselors support clients exploring life transitions, relationship issues, and any number of other concerns – including […]
I got a bit of a surprise call last Thursday from Agent Potter, with Union Pacific [UP] Railroad Police. We’d been notified by the County’s encampment response team that UP was coming to do a South County cleanout sometime in April – outreach teams should work to clear inhabitants of camps so that Union Pacific […]
Two weeks ago, the Hands team was on a countywide conference call regarding the upcoming camp clearing by Union Pacific. Outreach teams should attempt to get everyone camping along the railroad tracks into shelter before the clearing. Shelter beds, of course, are scarce. PATH, the Rescue Mission, and the Salvation Army are the only providers, […]
The repurposed Santa Barbara store fronts at 4020 Calle Real, Suite 2, are serving our city’s homeless two meals a day – and a place to call home from 9 am to 3 pm. This is the Fr. Virgil Cordano Center (FVCC), conceived by the Daughters of Charity at St. Vincent’s and the Franciscan Friars […]
We’ve written in these pages before about how the Hands Across Montecito project is a solid outreach team that helps people leave homelessness in our area. In January, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) required every jurisdiction to perform a point-in-time count of the people living unsheltered to allocate funding for homeless […]
As a person who has experienced homelessness as a former addict living on the streets of Ventura County, I have come to understand how chronic vagrancy gives homelessness a bad name. For the last four years I have made the choice to wake up clean and sober so I can advocate for others like me […]
David Fletcher, head food service specialist at the Rescue Mission, certainly had his hands full on Thanksgiving Day, not only preparing for more than 300 homeless guests, but three other local organizations, adding another 100 recipients. David, who started on the job last year, says it has gotten easier as time goes by, with 25 […]
Just 24 hours later I was at the Santa Barbara Veterans Memorial Building where 500 homeless turned out for a third Thanksgiving dinner organized by Adam’s Angels, a nonprofit founded by local Douglas Elliman realtor Adam McKaig and fellow resident Crystal Iverson. As they tucked into 400 pounds of turkey and 100 pumpkin pies, they […]
You’ve read in these pages about Hands Across Montecito, a very successful homeless outreach and placement team of the Montecito Association, made up of Montecitans, Sheriffs, Montecito Fire, Behavioral Wellness, and City Net. Our first client, Andrew Verlikanje, really hates litter, so he picks it up. Andrew impressed Heal the Ocean when he wanted to […]
To the charming Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez for A Toast To Home, a fundraiser for PATH – People Assisting the Homeless – which attracted 150 guests and was expected to raise around $60,000 for the 38-year-old charity that has homeless services in more than 150 cities with more than 60 locations. In 2021-22 PATH […]
It’s noon, about five hours later than Hands Across Montecito’s (HAM) usual monthly hike to locate and aid our village’s hidden population of unhoused individuals. We generally arrive just after dawn to find folks barely awake in their bivouacs around freeway entrances, in gullies near the railroad tracks and cemetery, along creek beds, and on […]
Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley (FBSMV) does some very important and impactful work. Since its founding in 2003 as a response to the methamphetamine epidemic in the Valley, the nonprofit has taken a proactive approach to the issues, creating programs that focus on protecting kids not only from drugs and other substance abuse but also […]
Bobbi McGinnis is the current Chair of the Santa Barbara County GOP committee, a position she has had since 2019, after being its secretary and committee member since 2013. She is a first-generation U.S. born citizen. Her parents moved to the U.S. from England in 1949, choosing Santa Barbara as their new home, with her […]
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 […]
