Who’s Working Effectively to Address Homelessness in Santa Cruz County?

BY GRACE STETSON

Although both the county and its four cities have stepped up services for the homeless, another contingent also does important work: nonprofit and community groups.

These organizations are visible countywide, from serving food daily in downtown Santa Cruz’s Clock Tower to connecting with the unhoused for mental health services in one-on-one and group settings. It’s unclear exactly how many organizations exist to address the issue that affects more than 2,299 individuals locally, according to the most recent Point-in-Time Count tally, but Housing Matters lists at least two dozen organizations, broken down by need. Serg Kagno of Stepping Up Santa Cruz updates a much larger list, with sections indicating where unhoused individuals can get meals, find advocates, access bathrooms, and receive mental health support.

While there isn’t an exact number on how many nonprofit and community organizations exist to address homelessness in the county, the ones that have made an impact are both small and large, focused and far-reaching.

Homeless and community advocate Brooke Newman—who previously served as the project manager for Santa Cruz Downtown Streets Team and has more than 15 years of experience in the nonprofit sector—believes that the impact of one community organization over another often comes down to two encompassing things: staffing and funding.

“It’s complicated, because in thinking of terms of impact, there’s quality and quantity—and it doesn’t necessarily feel like there are many [organizations] with both,” she says. “It’s the groups generally that are probably touching smaller numbers that are probably doing the higher quality work, but a lot of this stuff has to do with funding.”

Housing Authority principal analyst Rayne Perez, who previously worked as the county’s homeless services coordinator for more than five years, shares similar feelings: “It’s kind of hard to know where to begin when you’re thinking about what's most impactful or who’s doing what, but what I can tell you is that we have an almost closed system here—we just don’t typically have a lot of new operators coming into town. We’ve been operating with the same group of players for a fairly long time, with some exceptions.”

With that in mind, both advocates, along with off-record city and county officials, enumerated some of the most unsung organizations that serve the homeless population in Santa Cruz County. Below is a short list of which ones they believe are most impactful.