Don’t tell members of San Benito County’s homeless population
to
”
get a job.
”
Many are employed already. But most have nowhere to stay tonight
because the county doesn’t maintain a single homeless shelter.
Don’t tell members of San Benito County’s homeless population to “get a job.”
Many are employed already. But most have nowhere to stay tonight because the county doesn’t maintain a single homeless shelter.
According to local activists, county residents do not realize the magnitude of the problem, and some are blind to the crisis all together.
Hollister City Manager George Lewis said officials from the county, city, health department and social services met to discuss the issue in early 2001. They estimated a homeless population in San Benito County of up to 4,000 people.
“They aren’t very visible,” Lewis said. “We know they’re there, often crowded into facilities not made for habitation.”
The demand for homeless housing is not being met, said Kathy Flores, executive director of Community Services and Workforce Development.
CSWD operates the county’s only program exclusively for the homeless – a migrant camp for seasonal farmworkers. The waiting list for its 16 mobile home units now stands at 160 families, Flores said. And because of that, CSWD’s policy allows its residents to stay only six months.
“If a family walks into our office in need of immediate shelter, we don’t have the resources to address the immediate need,” she said.
Hollister’s Kathleen Reddick Yager is another activist for the homeless. She has developed relationships with area homeless people and once helped to house 11 at the Church of Christ. Many of those homeless were articulate, she said. They were intelligent.
As a whole, however, Yager said the community hasn’t taken notice. Like ghosts, the homeless presence is dismissed by nonbelievers.
“I don’t believe the people of San Benito County know we have a serious homeless problem,” Yager said. If more people did know, services would not be so far behind demand, she said.
“These are people who are homeless,” Yager said. “And they sleep in places like Fremont Peak, in their car, and are going to work.”
According to Yager, Flores and others, the homeless regularly flock to other city landmarks such as Park Hill, Dunne Park, along the San Benito River and even behind a local gas station.
This is not a strange dream where people can rub their eyes and make it vanish. This is real.
“Two years ago, 200 people lived on the river alone,” Yager said. “There are people driving around Hollister until 10 p.m. because that’s when motels usually drop rates. There are dozens of people behind Quik Stop… on Park Hill. It’s a very, very serious problem in the county.”
Conversely, San Benito County claims the eighth highest median household income in the state – which means the cost-of-living for low-income earners escalates even more here.
A statewide study last week revealed that San Benito and Monterey counties together suffer the worst rate of “food insecurity” in the Central Coast region, much more than Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The study was the largest state health survey ever conducted in the United States.
And eyes are even more reliable than numbers. Sheriff Curtis Hill has witnessed the “ongoing phenomenon” on a regular basis. About a year ago, the sheriff’s department removed a large group of homeless from a private property on Park Hill.
Families Coping
Rosa Munoz, 16, doesn’t need statistics or eyewitnesses for proof of Hollister’s homeless crisis. She frequently lived the homeless lifestyle with her family for three years. In churches, with friends, at relatives’ houses – anywhere the family found solace. Rosa lived in transition.
“My closest friends knew,” Rosa said. “I was ashamed to tell a lot of other friends.”
The Munoz family – made up of two disabled-nonworking parents and six children – rented five different houses in Hollister since 1989. Ownership changes and escalated rents forced them to move around, about every two years.
And with each move they found it harder to find affordable housing. During interim periods without permanent shelter, they settled for anything but the rugged ground of the river’s edge, or a bench.
“We never stayed in a park or anything,” said Leah Munoz, Rosa’s mother. “But I know plenty of people who did.”
Rosa approached the Hollister City Council in August about the city’s lack of homeless services. She said Lewis committed to starting a soup kitchen and, ultimately, a homeless shelter.
But the Munoz family left Hollister in September – out of desperation – for Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley. The cost of housing in the valley is substantially less.
“People can actually live on minimum wage here,” Leah said from her new house. The family’s mortgage payments on the home equaled half its most recent rent in Hollister.
Tulare County was noted in last week’s hunger study for having the highest incidence of food insecurity among low-income people in the state, at 41 percent.
Henry Sumaya attempted to form a local homeless coalition two years ago. He petitioned numerous officials to purchase the National Guard Armory building, located near the airport, for use as a wintertime homeless shelter. But the necessary resources weren’t available at the time, he said.
“George Lewis was a tremendous help in trying to purchase that property,” Sumaya said.
The Armory isn’t a realistic option now, Lewis said. The National Guard doesn’t own it anymore. The state does, he said, which creates barriers. And the location is inconvenient, he said.
“They would have a hard time walking three miles downtown,” he said.
Lewis hasn’t given up on the idea of a shelter elsewhere, though.
“I believe if a property or group would come forward, the city would be willing to assist or cooperate with that,” Lewis said. He added that no one, as of yet, has made such a commitment.
Even though she’s gone, Rosa doesn’t want others to forget about Lewis’ pledge.
“I hope people follow-up on the commitment I got from George Lewis for a soup kitchen, and how he would work on a homeless shelter,” she said.
Rosa is undoubtedly bright. While living in Hollister, she worked part-time and planned to earn her high school degree two years early from Pinnacles County School. She remains on track to graduate early from high school in Tulare and then attend a local college.
“I might have a chance here,” she said, referring to Tulare. “Until this year, I thought things were going to keep going down hill.”
Many in San Benito County aren’t so fortunate and continue tumbling down steep, hopeless paths. Like an endless tread in choppy water, they bob for air with nothing shallow in sight.
As a 19-year-old in 1996, Tiffany Nevin worked full-time in Hollister. Then, a high-risk twin pregnancy four years ago forced Nevin to stop working. From there, she increasingly struggled to pay rent while raising three children. The twin girls are now 3. Her boy is 7.
Nevin and her three children spent April 2001 to February homeless, in a Gilroy labor camp, because she couldn’t afford rent anywhere closeby. She commuted to Hollister for work.
“I basically couldn’t afford $80 a night for hotel, myself and my three children,” Nevin said.
Eventually through the county, she received funding to put down a $1,500 deposit on an apartment. But stability doesn’t exist for Nevin, who is currently jobless and collects unemployment. She still struggles with rent. Last month she was $40 short and only managed to pay rent with assistance from CSWD.
Nevin is 25, intelligent and insecure over having a warm place to sleep. She has slept in her car. She has desperately driven to her grandmother’s house in San Jose on several occasions. Her own mother was evicted from two separate apartments for housing Nevin and the kids. The Yagers took them in twice.
A Working Class of Destitution
Flores said most homeless people in San Benito don’t fit generalizations about living on the streets.
“There’s a public perception that our homeless are families not contributing to the community,” Flores said. “We have a large number that are wage-earners. But they’re minimum-wage-earners.”
Yager blames Hollister’s housing costs for the struggles of local people. The average cost of a home in San Benito County is $350,000, according to the state department of finance.
To Yager, one woman’s situation a couple years ago typifies the problem.
“She arrived from Fresno with a masters degree in social work and had to live homeless in her V.W. Bug for a month until her first paycheck,” Yager said. “She was without a home.
“We have a broad level of absent or inadequate housing in the county.”
Handfuls of people with awareness continue trudging toward a solution. Getting started seems to be the largest obstacle.
“It takes a lot of organization,” said Tom Larkin, executive director of Community Pantry.
Lewis said expansion of CSWD’s migrant camp could be one step.
“If we knew how much it would cost, we could put pressure on the state to open up more for operation,” he said.
California voters passed Proposition 46 Nov. 5, which funds 21 different housing programs. It provides $1.11 billion for multi-family housing, $405 million to homeownership programs, $200 million to farmworkers housing and $385 million for other related agendas.
Pauline Valdivia, executive director of Jovenes de Antano, which services the area’s elderly, said a shelter is needed.
“It’s one of the things on my list,” said Valdivia, who was re-elected to Hollister City Council Nov. 5. “It’s hard to address. It’s not that visible, but it’s there.”
Surrounding counties have homeless problems, too. But those communities support shelters and widespread services. Several shelters exist in Monterey County, which – as of last Saturday – approved a mobile unit that will offer medical and dental help to the community’s homeless.
The City of Gilroy maintains “Homeless Shelter Guidelines,” and welcomes the idea of future sites. One shelter currently operates within Gilroy.
What about Hollister?
“There truly is no homeless shelter,” Lewis said. “If you go out under the bridges, you will find people.”
Yager said most people in the county are good-hearted. But she agreed that awareness must spread before progress can be made.
“It’s the nature of our lives. It’s unseen,” she said.
