Category Archives: Mainstream Media

Deadly shootings reveal divisions of Anaheims

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by AMY TAXIN
Associated Press Jul. 26, 2012

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — As police around City Hall tried to quell rock-hurling protesters angry over two deadly police shootings, the night sky exploded with splendid bursts of green and orange from Disneyland fireworks a few miles away. Pyrotechnic booms trailed popping sounds as officers in riot gear fired pepper balls and bean bags at protesters.

The contrasting scenes were reflective of the two Anaheims that were on display this week. One is a magical tourist destination, and the other is a place where shifting demographics have left a large segment of the population feeling like second-class citizens.

“This is not quite ‘The Happiest Place on Earth,’ and now the world knows it,” said Joese Hernandez, referencing Disneyland’s motto. “It’s great if you live in the hills, but if you live right around the corner from ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ you realize it’s a whole different ball game.”

The 27-year-old community organizer, who grew up in Anaheim, made the statement to the City Council as raucous protests raged outside Tuesday night.

Two fatal police shootings last weekend — one of an unarmed man police say was a known gang member— roiled the city and exposed its divisions. Demonstrators took to the streets four nights in a row.

Tuesday’s was the largest and most violent protest, with some of the nearly 600 demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police, who made two dozen arrests. About 20 businesses were damaged.

The city has asked federal authorities to investigate the shootings.

Both victims were Hispanic, as were most of the demonstrators. The city, about 90 percent white in 1970, now has a population that is 53 percent Hispanic.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, alleging that Anaheim’s at-large elections have weakened Latinos’ voting power. The suit claims only three councilmembers in the city’s history have been Hispanic. Most of the City Council currently hails from the city’s upscale neighborhoods to the east.

“So much attention has been paid to building up the resort district and somehow those resources would trickle down to the rest of the city and we’re just not seeing it,” said Jose Moreno, president of Los Amigos of Orange County and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “A lot of us are saying enough is enough and this police shooting is really just emblematic of something more systemic in the politics of the city.”

While it’s known worldwide as the home of Disneyland, the reality is Anaheim is much more than a theme park. It’s a big city — the population is 336,000, about the same as Tampa, Fla., and Honolulu — and it has big-city problems. There is great wealth for some, but a large segment of the population lives in or at the edge of poverty.

Those differences can be seen in the tony, hilltop homes in the east to the rundown areas like Anna Street, where some residents shrug off the presence of gangs so long as they’re left alone. It’s a far cry from the place filled with orange groves that Walt Disney chose for his theme park in the 1950s because it had so much open space.

Since then, the city has been a magnet for tourists flocking to see Mickey Mouse or attend an event at the massive convention center touted as the largest on the West Coast. There is professional baseball with the Angels and pro hockey with the Ducks, whose original name Mighty Ducks name came from — what else? — a Disney film.

More than 17 million people visited Anaheim last year and spent nearly $4.6 billion. Few ever see much of the city, however. Visitors to the neatly manicured theme park or Angel Stadium can reach their destinations by zipping off the freeway and into a parking lot without passing through the city’s residential neighborhoods.

Tourism officials have been in close contact with the city since the unrest. On Wednesday, the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau was quick to reassure visitors the city is safe and pointed out the recent police incidents didn’t take place in the area where Disneyland and the convention center are located.

Gene Jeffers, executive director of the Themed Entertainment Association, said some area residents might put off visiting the resort in the next few days but he doesn’t see any real effect on tourism — especially not on those who hail from out of town.

“There’s a pretty big buffer zone around the park,” said Jeffers, whose organization represents theme park designers and developers.

Mayor Tom Tait warned the city would take swift action to stop any additional violence. He also noted the violence occurred far from tourist hubs.

Local activists have complained that officials spend too much time worrying about image for tourists and on big-time developers, but not enough on housing and services for its people.

Critics have blasted city officials for extending a tax break to a Disneyland-area hotel developer and want to change elections in Anaheim to make officials more accountable to local districts.

They have also demanded an independent investigation into recent police shootings — which officials had agreed to seek even before the weekend’s events pushed the total number of fatal police shootings to six this year.

On Saturday, a police officer fatally shot Manuel Diaz outside an Anna Street apartment complex. Officers say Diaz, who had a criminal record, failed to heed orders and threw something as he fled police. The city’s police union said Diaz reached for his waistband, which led the officer to believe he was drawing a gun.

Diaz’s family, which is suing for $50 million in damages, says he was shot in the leg and the back of the head. During a protest the night of the shooting, a police dog escaped and bit a bystander.

On Sunday night, police shot to death Joel Acevedo, a suspected gang member they say fired at officers after a pursuit.

Veronica Rodarte, a 25-year-old social services program coordinator, said she is well aware of the problems with gang violence and police in the city where she’s lived her entire life. But she doesn’t like how residents’ outrage, even if justified, has turned violent.

“We are very upset with the portrayals our city is getting and the violence that is erupting in our city,” she said. “Throwing rocks and rioting and setting trash bins on fire is not going to help us move forward.”

San Leandro sued in Oakland man’s death

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by Henry K. Lee
S.F. Chronicle Thursday, July 26, 2012

The mother of a man who was high on methamphetamine when he died after struggling with San Leandro police has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Darnell Hutchinson, 32, of Oakland had been acting paranoid and scaring customers at the Nation’s Giant Hamburgers restaurant at 1335 Washington Ave. on Oct. 9.

Employees called police after Hutchinson refused to leave. Officers tried to take him into protective custody, but he became “physically combative,” San Leandro police Lt. Jeff Tudor has said.

An officer shot Hutchinson with his stun gun, but it had little or no effect, police said. Four officers finally managed to handcuff him, police said.

Hutchinson immediately began showing signs of distress. He died at a hospital.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Hutchinson’s mother, Katherine Hutchinson, said officers engaged in an “unlawful assault. The officers held Mr. Hutchinson down by digging their knees and feet into his body and leveraging their bodies against his and the pavement.” The suit, filed by Oakland attorney John Burris, seeks unspecified damages.

Hutchinson died of acute methamphetamine intoxication, authorities said.

An internal investigation determined that the officers had acted appropriately, Tudor said.

Anaheim Cracks Down as Police Shootings Set Off Protests

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by Jennifer Medina
NY Times, July 25, 2012

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Violent protests have stretched on through the week here after unrelated police shootings over the weekend left two men dead, including one who was apparently unarmed.

Even before the shootings, there were tensions between residents and the police. On Tuesday, the crowds that gathered near City Hall grew to nearly 1,000 people, and were dispersed by officers in riot gear.

As the City Council prepared to hear from angry residents on Tuesday, the fourth night of protest, the crowd swelled to nearly 1,000, and there were two dozen arrests, officials said Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, with an increased police presence, there were no immediate reports of arrests, and there were few protesters.

The protests have shaken up this Orange County city, most famous as the home of Disneyland. Tensions between the police and residents, which have simmered for years, broke out shortly after Manuel Diaz, 25, was shot and killed by the police on Saturday.

On Tuesday, as hundreds of people packed City Hall for a City Council meeting, a crowd outside grew in size and became violent, throwing rocks and bottles at police cars. One man reportedly had a handgun and was later arrested.

A short while later, the demonstrators moved through downtown, taking over an intersection, setting fires and damaging 20 businesses, officials said. Looters broke several storefront windows, and in at least one incident a fight broke out when an older resident tried to stop a young woman stealing from a store window.

The police declared the gathering an unlawful assembly around 9 p.m., and some 300 officers in riot gear used batons, pepper balls and beanbag bullets to disperse the crowd.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Tom Tait, who has asked for state and federal investigations into the shootings, said he was pleased with the police response.

“The first step is to get to the truth,” Mr. Tait said. “That takes some time and patience, and that’s what I’m asking for.”

“Violence and vandalism have no place in the conversation,” he added.

Chief John Welter of the Anaheim Police Department said it would review videos posted on the Internet to find “lawbreakers in the crowd.”

“We will not allow riotous, dangerous violations of the law by anyone,” Mr. Welter said. “We will protect innocent people from being injured and property from being damaged.”

Officials said they had contingency plans in place for the rest of the week in case of more violent protests, but they would not elaborate.

Six people, including one police officer said to have been hit with a rock, were reported injured, although none seriously. The charges against those arrested included assault with a deadly weapon, battery and resisting arrest.

The police said they believed roughly two-thirds of the protesters were from outside Anaheim. But the majority of those arrested were city residents, they said.

Mr. Tait said he would meet with federal officials, who have agreed to review Saturday’s shooting to see whether a civil rights inquiry is needed. The district attorney and state attorney general are also investigating the shootings.

The family of Mr. Diaz, the first of the two men killed by the police, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, asserting that he was unarmed when he was shot, fell to his knees and then was shot again, in the back of the head.

“In a poor brown neighborhood, the kids, especially the boys, know to avoid the police, because it never ends well,” said Dana Douglas, a lawyer for the Diaz family.

Genevieve Huizar, Mr. Diaz’s mother, broke down after a news conference. She spoke of her son’s devoted care for his 14 nieces and nephews and his dreams of making his own family. When he told her he wanted to join the military, she strongly objected, she said.

“I didn’t want him to go over there and die,” she said, choking back tears. “Maybe I should have let him and everything would be different. Only God knows.”

Both the mayor and police chief have declined to offer any public explanation of the shooting, but Kerry Condon, the president of the Anaheim Police Association, has said that Mr. Diaz appeared to be carrying a “concealed object in his front waistband with both hands,” and that he ran off, pulled the object out of his waistband and turned to the officers.

“Feeling that Diaz was drawing a weapon, the officer opened fire on Diaz to stop the threat,” Mr. Condon said. No gun has been recovered from the site.

The other man killed by the police, Joel Mathew Acevedo, 21, was shot after officers tried to stop his car on Sunday. The police say that he tried to flee on foot and that he then opened fire on them. The police said that both Mr. Acevedo and Mr. Diaz were gang members with criminal records.

There have been six shootings by Anaheim police officers so far this year, all but one fatal.

Occupy Oakland: focusing or fading away?

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Matthai Kuruvila and Demian Bulwa
S.F. Chronicle, Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Occupy activists have assailed a federal government they say colludes with the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. But on Monday when the president came to raise money in downtown Oakland – home of the nation’s most militant Occupy movement – the protesters did little to respond.

President Obama, who attended a big fundraiser at the Fox Theater, was met primarily by a group of medical marijuana advocates. Some Occupy protesters joined them and later marched, but their actions were a stark contrast to events in the past that drew thousands.

Whether it’s a sign of a movement that’s lost steam – or is merely evolving – is still unclear.

“We don’t know where it goes, but we’re in the early stages,” said Matt Smaldone, 38, a West Oakland resident who has been involved in Occupy Oakland since the beginning. “I don’t think we’re at a risk of things stopping, because the economy is not improving.”

More than nine months after setting up an elaborate tent city outside City Hall, leading to infamous clashes with the police, Occupy Oakland is again trying to reinvent itself without the unifying force of the encampment and in the face of critics who question their aggressive tactics.

Thinking smaller

Large-scale actions – like shutdowns of the Port of Oakland in November and December – don’t appear to be the future. Instead, the movement has fragmented into smaller groups focused on issues like school closures, foreclosure prevention and a fatal police shooting in May.

That means doing things that often involve neighborhood organizing, which happens far from downtown. For some, that’s a sign of progress.

“It’s a good thing people are focused less on spectacles and doing more community organizing work,” said Steven Angell, 23, an Occupy Oakland activist since January. “Those are much more important, particularly for Oakland.”

But some critics of Occupy Oakland said the group had lost much of the support it had last year, in part because some members put so much energy into confronting police.

‘Mayhem’ criticized

“They would get support if they would fight for a cause, not just cause mayhem,” said Nancy Sidebotham, 67, who helped organize Stand for Oakland, a group of citizens and merchants that spoke out against Occupy Oakland. “They need to go after the banks or the economy. Pick something and go after it. Don’t try to go all over the map because you can’t get it together.”

Members acknowledge that their numbers have shrunk, and not just at public actions. General assemblies, held twice a week, have drawn fewer and fewer people, prompting moves to reduce from 100 the size of the quorum needed for a vote. In Occupy Oakland’s heyday, some meetings attracted more than 1,000 people.

Wendy Kenin, a 40-year-old Berkeley resident who is on Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission, said a core group at the assemblies is “holding the space for the continuation of the movement. It might not look like the massive uprising of last year, but it’s still active. There are going to be ebbs and flows.”

Several people, though, said that frustration and burnout had chipped away at the movement and that divides had opened due to violence and infighting – sometimes, ironically, over how to spend donated money.

Some people who participated in Occupy Oakland felt it was important to rally against the police, particularly after they arrested protesters. But others saw a useless series of skirmishes that could have been largely avoided, and that distracted from the core message of economic inequality.

On Monday, Spencer Mills – who helped pioneer live, online broadcasts of Occupy Oakland events – criticized protesters for past tactics like throwing rocks at police.

“Please, come off that high horse & tell me what you have accomplished with violence & property destruction in Oakland,” he wrote on Twitter. “Actually, it has accomplished things. #OPD can better justify its budget,@JeanQuan gets the high moral ground & (Occupy Oakland) drifts in obscurity.”

Blaming the establishment

Many Occupy activists said tension is inevitable in a big social movement. They said the internal discord has been heightened by outside forces, particularly police and the press.

“The establishment did such a great job demonizing the Occupy movement that a lot of people who are unhappy with the economy are too afraid to show up,” said David Meany, 32, of Pleasant Hill, a self-described pacifist who has been coming to Occupy Oakland since nearly the beginning.

Rachel Dorney, 24, of Oakland, who moved into the original City Hall encampment, said she had been less involved in recent months, in part because of internal strife. But she, too, believed Occupy would not fade away.

“I don’t think it’s dead,” she said. “I hope it’s not. Whatever happens, we can’t go back to how it was (in America). Things have definitely changed. It’s an idea, and I think a lot of times people forget that. Whatever happens, we haven’t failed.”

Pajaro Rescue Mission celebrates 50th anniversary with expansion

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By Donna Jones
Santa Cruz Sentinel, 07/23/2012

PAJARO — George Muro hit bottom three years ago.

His marriage had fallen apart. He had lost the custodial job he had held for 12 years at a school district in Tracy. He was drinking and using drugs.

That’s when his daughter told him only one thing could save him: God.

Muro, 47, heeded that advice and reclaimed his life at the Pajaro Rescue Mission, which provides food and shelter to the homeless and, for those who want to seize it, the chance to change their lives. Sitting in the mission’s dining room Monday, Muro clutched a Bible and quoted scripture from memory. During his nearly three years at the mission, he’s found sobriety, reconnected with his family and rediscovered his faith.

He’s also close to obtaining the equivalent of a high school diploma, a huge accomplishment for a man who arrived at the mission with the math skills of a second-grader and in such an addled condition that he could barely string a sentence together, let alone read a book.

“If it wasn’t for this place, there’s no telling where I’d be,” said Muro.

The mission, which serves men and is managed by the faith-based nonprofit, Teen Challenge Monterey Bay, will mark its 50th anniversary at a community celebration Aug. 25. But as leaders prepare for the party, they’re also working to expand the shelter’s capacity by almost 50 percent to fill an anticipated gap in homeless services when the Salvation Army closes its Watsonville shelters Aug. 15.

The Salvation Army announced in June it could no longer afford to operate two shelters for men and one for women and children near its Union Street headquarters. The shelters serve about 60 people, including about 40 men.

Chuck Allen, the former board president for the Pajaro Valley Salvation Army, said he hopes to go to the organization’s regional board with a proposal to hand over management of the men’s shelters to the mission by the end of the month. He also helps to raise $100,000 in the community to support the effort.

But Mike Borden, Teen Challenge’s executive director, said Pajaro Rescue Mission will find a way to provide for the men regardless. It’s an opportunity to impact 40 more lives, he said.

“We will take that up,” Borden said. “We don’t turn anyone away.”

On a tour of the mission Monday, Teen Challenge leaders laid out a plan to increase the number of cots set up nightly in the mission chapel. They’ll put more cots in the dining room, if necessary, Borden said.

They also are seeking donation of two vans so they can transport men to the mission from the Salvation Army, which will continue to serve meals.

They’ll also open the Teen Challenge recovery program to men seeking sobriety. The program, which provides beds in dorms upstairs in the two-story mission, requires clients without a high school diploma to go back to school, and it provides training for jobs in construction, culinary arts and landscaping.

“We’re able to offer something more than a bed,” Borden said. “We’re offering a chance to open the door and change their lives.”

Good Samaritan talks man down from Morrissey bridge, police say

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Cathy Kelly – Santa Cruz Sentinel
Posted:   07/22/2012

SANTA CRUZ – Police got a call about 6:30 a.m. that a man was on the Morrissey Boulevard bridge over Highway 1, apparently planning to kill himself, Santa Cruz police said.

When officers arrived, they found that a passerby had seen the man on the railing and stopped and was able to talk him out of jumping, police said. The man had planned to leap off the bridge into the path of a large truck, officers said.

The 47-year-old man, described as a transient, was taken to Dominican Hospital, police said.

Family seeks reports in police shooting

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Henry K. Lee
SF Chronicle, July 20, 2012

Relatives of a man shot and killed by Oakland police lashed out at the department Thursday, saying they have been unable to obtain a full accounting of what led to his death.

Alan Blueford, 18, was shot after witnesses said he pointed a gun at an officer early May 6 during a chase near 92nd Avenue and Birch Street in East Oakland, according to police.

But Blueford’s relatives reiterated Thursday that they didn’t believe the police version of events. They said they want to see the police report to learn more about the circumstances of the slaying, including why the officer opened fire and whether Blueford received medical care after being shot.

“I cannot begin to tell you what this has done to my life and my family,” said Blueford’s mother, Jeralynn Blueford, 46, of Tracy, at a news conference outside the coroner’s office in downtown Oakland. “I, as his mother – we, as parents – deserve to know what happened to our baby.”

Adam Blueford, the dead man’s father, said, “We want the truth. We’re not going to stand for anything but the truth.”

Representatives of police and the district attorney’s office said they have not turned over their findings to the family because the investigations are still open.

“We established lines of communication with the family early on, and we have continued to share information as it becomes available for release,” said Sgt. Chris Bolton, chief of staff for Chief Howard Jordan.

The incident began when an officer, identified by sources as Miguel Masso, and his partner saw Blueford and two companions on the 1900 block of 90th Avenue shortly after midnight. Blueford appeared to be hiding a gun, police said.

Blueford ran and twice pointed a gun at Masso, who responded with four shots, according to Masso’s attorney, Harry Stern.

Three shots hit Blueford, and the fourth hit the officer in the leg, police said.

Several independent witnesses said they had seen Blueford point the gun, Bolton said.

A gun was recovered at the scene, police said. Investigators do not believe it was fired.

Blueford was on the verge of graduating from Skyline High School in Oakland. He was on felony probation for a burglary conviction from San Joaquin County, Bolton said.

Dan Siegel, an attorney who previously served as legal adviser for Mayor Jean Quan, said at the news conference that authorities’ disclosure of Blueford’s criminal history and their reluctance to release information was “absolutely contemptible” and “slander.”

Stabbing suspect shot by SF police has died

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Associated Press

July 19, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco police say a man shot by an officer has died after he allegedly attacked a co-worker at a chocolate factory moments earlier.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said the shooting occurred Wednesday in the city’s Financial District shortly after the 30-year-old temporary worker slashed his co-worker in the arm with a box cutter at the TCHO New American Chocolate at Pier 17 along the city’s Embarcadero.

Suhr said a female officer giving chase ordered the suspect to drop the box cutter when he lunged at her with it. She shot him twice in the upper torso.

Suhr said officers began performing CPR on the suspect as he was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries. The suspect’s name has not been released.

Police say the slashing victim at the factory suffered minor injuries.

Facing Foreclosure After 50

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By ROBBIE BROWN
NY Times: July 19, 2012

T. Lynne Pixley for The New York Times
Roy Johnson, 79, recently lost the home he built 48 years earlier in Georgia to foreclosure. Older Americans are increasingly facing this problem.

MABLETON, Ga. — Roy Johnson fell so far behind on his $1,000-per-month mortgage payments that last year he allowed the redbrick, three-bedroom ranch he had owned since 1963 to lapse into foreclosure.

“I couldn’t pay it any longer,” he said. “One day, I woke up and said, ‘Hell, I’m through with it. I’m walking away from the house.’ ”

That decision swept Mr. Johnson, 79, into a rapidly expanding demographic: older Americans who have lost their homes in the Great Recession. As he hauled his belongings by pickup truck from this Atlanta suburb and moved into his daughter’s basement, Mr. Johnson became one of the one and a half million Americans over the age of 50 who lost their houses to foreclosure between 2007 and 2011. Of those, the highest foreclosure rate was for homeowners over 75.

Once viewed as the most fiscally stable age group, older people are flailing. On Wednesday, AARP released what it described as the most comprehensive analysis yet of why the foreclosure crisis struck so many Americans in their retirement years. The report found that while people under 50 are the group most likely to face foreclosure, the risk of “serious delinquency” on mortgages has grown fastest for people over 50.

While the study classified even baby boomers as “older Americans,” its most dire findings were for the oldest group. Among people over 75, the foreclosure rate grew more than eightfold from 2007 to 2011, to 3 percent of that group of homeowners, the report found.

“Despite the perception that older Americans are more housing secure than younger people, millions of older Americans are carrying more mortgage debt than ever before, and more than three million are at risk of losing their homes,” the report found. “As the mortgage crisis continues, millions of older Americans are struggling to maintain their financial security.”

The report was based on nationwide loan data that covered a five-year span. The profile of those facing foreclosure has changed since 2007. As the average age and wealth of those people rise, their foreclosures are less likely to involve high-interest loans. In fact, most foreclosures are now the result of prime loans rather than subprime ones, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Instead, older Americans are losing their homes because of pension cuts, rising medical costs, shrinking stock portfolios and falling property values, according to Debra Whitman, AARP’s executive vice president for policy. They are also not saving enough money. Half of households whose head is between 65 and 74 have no money in retirement accounts, according to the Federal Reserve.

At CredAbility, an Atlanta-based credit counseling agency, the average age of callers needing help has risen to 49 from 43 in recent years. Scott Scredon, a spokesman for the agency, said most older Americans facing foreclosure are frugal but are unable to live on fixed incomes with the rising cost of living.

“When we think of foreclosures, we think of someone who was a little reckless and spent beyond their means,” he said. “The older the person, the less likely that is to be the case.”

Foreclosures create unique challenges for older people, Ms. Whitman said. They are less able to find new jobs and more vulnerable to becoming homeless, analysts say.

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Charlotte Orton’s three-bedroom apartment has been under foreclosure for four months. Since losing her job as a real estate agent, Ms. Orton’s only source of income has been Social Security payments of $1,200 per month.

If she is evicted, Ms. Orton, 69, who has no family members in Florida, says she does not know where she will live.

“This is the lowest point in my entire life,” she said. “If I were in my 30s, it would be easier to get employment. But all they want to know is what your recent experience is, and the real estate market has collapsed.”

Other older foreclosure victims have managed to negotiate with banks to stay in their houses. Josephine Tolbert, 76, was temporarily evicted from her house in San Francisco for two weeks. Protesters from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment staged a sit-in at Bank of America, and eventually Ms. Tolbert was able to renegotiate her loan.

“At my age, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said. “But let me tell you, it was a fight.”

Selling houses is also a challenge for many older people. The value of real estate has collapsed, especially in wealthy suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and other sprawling metropolitan areas.

For Mr. Johnson, it was painful to watch the house he built 48 years earlier sell for only $33,000 at auction last year.

Now he lives in what his 55-year-old daughter calls his “man cave” in her basement. It is an hour away from his old house. Although Mr. Johnson is grateful to have been helped by a relative, he misses having space for all of his belongings and the tree from which he made pear preserves.

“I planned to die in that house,” he said. “But I guess it won’t work out that way.”

One-Way Relationship

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City funds bus tickets out of Santa Cruz for homeless people

Dan Woo

Good Times, 17 July 2012

Up to 375 homeless people could be riding buses home courtesy of the City of Santa Cruz by this time next year. This is the hoped-for result of $25,000 the city council devoted to the Homeward Bound Project when they approved the city’s new budget at their June 26 meeting. The council used the name of an existing program run by the Homeless Services Center (HSC), which has helped about 75 people per year leave the area since 2006, according to HSC Director Monica Martinez. The effort has been funded by private donations.

The city funds will boost HSC’s coffers for bus tickets to $15,000, while also providing $10,000 to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department and $5,000 to Downtown Outreach Workers (DOWs) for the same purpose.

Martinez says these bus tickets home are one of the most sought-after services at the center. “We could probably spend as much as anyone would allocate for this,” she says of the demand. “Our current funding depletes very quickly.”

In doling out these passes, Martinez says the HSC is not simply pushing the issue of homelessness on to other communities. Case managers contact family or friends who are in a position to help the person at their chosen destination. They also explore likely job opportunities that may be waiting when they arrive.

This process is new to the Sheriff’s Department and DOWs, and although the core principles are the same, there are differences to be addressed before the money starts being spent.

One of these distinctions arose when residents outraged by recent violence proposed that homeless inmates at the Santa Cruz County Jail be sent to their former homes upon release. This is impossible in many cases because released inmates are free to go where they please unless the courts bar them from a certain area, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said in a May Santa Cruz Sentinel article. But with the proper resources to research a person’s destination they could conceivably offer tickets out of town to selected former inmates.

Good Times contacted Sheriff’s Deputy April Skalland for an update on how they are resolving these issues, but received no reply as of this writing.

The DOWs’ role in the program is more similar to the HSC’s, as they often deal with homeless people asking for a way out of Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz City Manager Martin Bernal’s office is currently working out who will oversee the new parts of the program run by the Sheriff’s Department and DOWs to find the most compassionate and effective way to give out the tickets.

City councilmembers Hilary Bryant, Lynn Robinson and Ryan Coonerty are also offering ways to make the program work in the Sheriff’s Department, according to Assistant City Manager Scott Collins.

The $10,000 addition by the city to the HSC’s private funds will result in some oversight of the HSC program, according to Mayor Don Lane, but he expects that to be minimal.

“There is no agreement with the Sheriff’s [Department] or Downtown Outreach [Workers] yet on how it will work,” he says. “It’s easier with the HSC because they have an existing program, so the city manager will just make sure their system is working.”

New York City has a similar program, on which they spend $500,000 each year, according to a New York Times article from July 28, 2009. Social workers there follow up with ticket recipients up to three weeks after a person’s departure and even cover some living expenses while a person gets their life rolling again.

Robert Norse of Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom (HUFF) says that the program isn’t a solution.

“[Homeward Bound] is less about providing services to people and more about getting people out of Santa Cruz that the merchants don’t want here,” says Norse.

Martinez estimates that less than 10 percent of people who receive bus tickets return to Santa Cruz. However, she adds that the only way they would know is if the person returned to their facilities again.

She offers advice that could help the program in all three involved agencies.

“The most important part is understanding their needs and identifying the opportunities at their destination,” she says. “We don’t in any way want to be shipping homelessness around.”