It’s a sunny day at Waller Park in Santa Maria; children run about the playground; disc golfers leisurely stroll across the grassy, tree-dotted hills; and the water fountain sparkles with the afternoon sunlight. A gray-haired retiree who goes by the name Kat sits alone in a sedan, a clean looking vehicle outside and in, if you were close enough to peek inside. She’s sitting in the driver’s seat, embroidering the image of a brown cross wreathed in green leaves, and listening to a portable radio.
Kat is home. She lives in her car.
You wouldn’t guess that Kat is homeless by looking at her—either when she’s sitting in the car or when out for a walk in the park, which she does regularly for exercise. This is her second time living in her car, even though she is retired and collecting a pension and Social Security, she told the Sun. It was a pragmatic decision, a choice she made both the first time she lived this way and now.
“The first time was for four years, then there was a two-year gap, and it’s been about a year and a half again,” Kat said. “I don’t know how long this will last. It had to do with filing bankruptcy, but now that I have a pension and Social Security, I am saving up to buy a place for myself.”
Kat is in the position to rent a room, or even rent a small apartment, but paying rent is an obstacle in the way of owning a place of her own.
Living in her car is easier than giving up a sizable portion of her income just to “pay someone else’s mortgage,” she said. Living with other people isn’t something she wants to have to do either, even though she has family who would take her in. She doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone, Kat said.
“It was a choice I made, I have no idea how long it will last, but I’m not concerned about that,” she said. “I live each day to the fullest, I’m not missing out on anything. Being in my home on wheels, I feel safe, because I have a safe place to park at night now, and I know the Lord will protect me.”
Kat used to park in a couple of different parking lots on the sly, she said, but she now parks in the driveway of a close friend. She doesn’t arrive until after the sun sets and is usually gone early in the morning, so as not to disturb her friend or her friend’s neighbors.
The thought of Kat, just old enough to start collecting Social Security, sitting in the park and embroidering in the shade of a tree, is certainly in conflict with the stereotype of homelessness. But other local residents without homes aren’t as fortunate as Kat. They are without cars, and their homelessness didn’t arise from a pragmatic decision.
Not a mile away from Waller Park, a man in his 50s named Anthony Holland waits for the crosswalk light to shift from the red hand to the white pedestrian symbol so he can cross Broadway. As soon as he gets the sign, he begins moving, pushing a purple 99 Cents Only Store shopping cart with his left hand and pulling a faded gray cart with his right.
“It’s illegal to have these, you know,” he said over the rattling of wheels on concrete. “It’s technically a felony. By and large the police are pretty cool about it; they’ve got better things to do, but they can get me any time they want to.”
The two carts are empty, and Holland has another one filled with his things, waiting for him back where he started. Like many homeless men and women, he collects recyclables to turn them in for money, and the shopping carts are the best receptacles with which to collect and transport the plastic bottles and aluminum cans he finds.
Holland has lived homeless for almost two years, he said, most of that time along with his girlfriend, who now has housing. Both of them live with forms of mental disorders, he explained with some self-effacing humor. He was very candid about how it has contributed to his situation.
“My girlfriend of almost 19 years is a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorders, and I’m bipolar; the eight of us get along pretty well,” he said. “I had a drinking, gambling, and drug problem that goes way back in time. But I was working on it, we were making baby steps upward.”
Both Holland and his girlfriend received housing from a local mental health organization, but things went wrong between them and some other tenants, who he claimed were dealing drugs while he was trying to get clean.
After more than a year on the streets together, they were able to get some housing for his girlfriend, but Holland is still living on the streets. He sleeps anywhere he can, he said, behind buildings, in alleys, hidden under bushes, porches, patios, wherever he’s out of sight.
“When you’re homeless, wherever you are, you’re potentially trespassing,” he said. “I slept in a dumpster once, I was so desperate and tired, and the cops were everywhere. They couldn’t find me because I was so deep in the dumpster. And thank God there wasn’t any garbage in there—it was all paper.
“It was terrible though. It’s terrible,” he continued. “Being homeless, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, I wouldn’t. It’s a hard, hard thing to be.”
His hands were dirty and his face sunburned as he explained how many other homeless people—especially the younger ones—live.
Many of them are drug addicts and alcoholics, he said, and they “boost” from stores to help fund their habits. They also steal from each other, he said, adding that his meager collections of recyclables and other goods have gone missing on several occasions.
“The store people hate the homeless. You can’t blame them for that,” he said. “I don’t steal, I don’t lie. I clean up wherever I go just ’cause I get bored, or I think it would look nicer like that. I always ask permission wherever I go to collect recycling. Try to help out. So, I’m popular the places I go and they know me.”
Living this way, Holland explained, one inevitably gets to know the local police force. He’s spoken with Santa Maria Police Department (SMPD) officers several times, he said, and acknowledged the SMPD has a “well-rounded,” “professional,” and overall “compassionate” police force.
He did mention that the bicycle officers are stricter than other patrol units, but he understands it’s their job to enforce ordinances that ban picking through trash containers and other infractions.
“Unfortunately, I’m collateral damage,” he said. “They pick on me thinking I’m like the rest of these guys, who crap where they sleep. They leave huge messes, they’re stealing. I just want to be invisible until I can find a place to live.”
According to the Central Coast Collaborative on Homelessness’ 2015 Point in Time homeless count, Santa Maria has seen an uptick in the number of people living homeless. The counts are conducted biennially, with 2015 being the most recent count. In 2011 there were 243 people living homeless; in 2013 that number rose to 300, and in 2015, it was 324.
Finding a place to live is an incredible challenge in Santa Maria, for just about anyone renting, and especially for low-income families and the homeless.
Many of the residents at the Good Samaritan Shelter in Santa Maria are actually working, or on their way to employment, explained the nonprofit’s Director of Shelter Operations Kirsten Cahoon, but they are still unable to rent a place. The problem stems from the high rents on the Central Coast paired with the less than 2 percent vacancy rate in housing in Santa Barbara County, Cahoon explained.
“Most of my clients in the shelter are working, but they are making minimum wage, and bottom line, you cannot rent and survive on minimum wage,” Cahoon said. “So that’s the problem. If we had more affordable housing, we wouldn’t see this huge homeless problem.”
The renting situation locally is incredibly competitive, Cahoon explained. She spoke with someone who posted a Santa Maria home for rent on craigslist.org, and within one hour there were already 45 applications from prospective tenants.
Cahoon continued to explain that property owners and rental agencies particularly favor higher income earners over those in poverty, and homeless individuals are particularly discriminated against, even if they qualify for housing assistance.
“If they have a choice to rent to a client who is working, or someone who is struggling, is in a shelter, is trying to get out of homelessness, who probably doesn’t have the best credit or work history because of their situation, they don’t have to choose them anymore,” she said. “It’s getting harder and harder. You see right on the Craigslist ads, they say ‘no Section 8,’ or ‘no programs.’ They can be choosey now, so it can be very difficult.”
Good Samaritan tries to help in as many ways as it can to address housing, Cahoon said. They’ve worked with the Housing Authority to procure more than 20 rental assistance vouchers, which become Section 8 vouchers after two years, she explained.
Even though a landlord is guaranteed rent from a participant in a program like that, it’s still difficult to persuade them to accept a tenant from the program, Cahoon said.
“It’s not easy. It is begging landlords, telling them that we’ll continue to case manage [the tenants],” she said. “You have to pretty much offer them everything under the sun to get them to accept one of these vouchers and accept one of these clients.”
Housing is such an issue in Santa Maria that the Good Samaritan Shelter has responded by making more housing itself. The shelter finished construction on Casa de Familia, a 16-unit apartment complex, in 2013. The additional building at the shelter complex on Morrison Street has provided permanent housing for homeless families ever since with virtually no vacancy.
Good Samaritan’s emergency shelter has been at capacity for more than three years now, Cahoon said, and the shelter hasn’t been able to shut down its overflow facility since it reached capacity. Part of that need is what drove the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to approve funding for a permanent housing solution for some of the area’s homeless veterans.
Good Samaritan will purchase a home in Old Orcutt with the help of $475,000 from the county. The home is specifically designated as permanent housing for veterans who have completed Good Samaritan’s sobriety and employment programs, she explained. The proposal wasn’t without its detractors from the neighborhood though, a few of which spoke at the Board of Supervisors meeting to voice concerns.
“That was a fight and a half, but it finally went through,” Cahoon said. “The neighbors fought us tooth and nail. I’ve lived in Orcutt for over 20 years and I never would have expected it.”
Good Samaritan is the only shelter in Santa Maria, and offers a wide variety of programs, from a drug and alcohol detoxification center to a transitional family shelter. But Good Samaritan can only meet the needs of so many.
On Pine Street, just half a mile away from Good Samaritan is The Salvation Army’s Santa Maria Corps, which offers emergency social services, a hot lunch program, food pantry, recovery programs, and youth programs for low-income and homeless kids.
Patricia Torres is the Corps’ officer along with her husband, Juan, at the location, which means they head the social services and are pastors at the church there. Torres explained that The Salvation Army serves up to, and often more than, 200 meals every day. They serve more meals during the summer, she said, because some homeless people do travel to the Central Coast to follow the weather, and local low-income kids are out of school.
The Salvation Army will hold an open house event on July 7, Torres explained, which will showcase some of the organization’s expanding programs, many of which are aimed at aiding families.
“I am from Los Angeles, and there is definitely homelessness in Los Angeles, but I have never seen so many homeless families than here in Santa Maria,” she said. “At The Salvation Army we try to not only meet just their basic physical needs, but their spiritual needs as well. The spirit is broken in that type of situation, and we want to provide some hope, a safe place where they can come and be broken with no judgment.”
The patch of lawn just outside The Salvation Army on Cook and Pine streets was lined with about half a dozen people on a recent afternoon, including parents with their kids. Some were eating their lunches, while others were lying down on blankets strewn on the grass.
A married couple, Angie and Daniel Guadiana lay side by side, talking softly, flanked by two strollers filled with their goods. They rely on food stamps and The Salvation Army for their meals, since they are both out of work. They weren’t always homeless, but Angie got sick and Daniel lost his job, they explained.
“Even when we get a check, it’s still hard,” Angie said. “We used to live in a motel, who wants to be on the street? But it was like, all our money was going to rent, so we couldn’t save anything. There’s no way to get ahead.”
Daniel used to stack vegetable crates for a local produce company, but he lost his job. Even when he worked five days a week, he said, it was still barely enough to cover the cost of a room.
They know Good Samaritan doesn’t turn away women or children, but the couple doesn’t want to be separated. Even when they can afford to rent a motel room, they deal with prejudice, getting refused simply because they’re homeless. So they live on the street, hoping for some luck and help navigating the bureaucracy of assistance programs, and relying on local organizations for the bare essentials.
“I used to judge, I did, and I lived a very comfortable life and took a lot of things for granted,” Angie said. “I wish people would see, that one day you don’t have that. It could happen to anybody.”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 23-30, 2016.
