By Emerson Malone

Activists around the south county are teaming together to restart the Homeless Coalition that began in the mid 1980s but lost momentum in the early 90s.

Even though the coalition is in its early stages, attorney and homeless activist Emily Allen is making plans for its future, including a screening two documentaries at the Santa Barbara Public Library.

“One thing that everybody envisions is the need for community action groups, basically, more grassroots-level of organizations,” she said. “We see [the coalition as] being made [up] of people who are homeless, people who have been homeless, [and] people who care about homeless issues.”

The documentaries that will be screened are: “Krystal Freedom” and “Streets of Paradise.” The free event will begin at 1 p.m., Sunday, April 15th in the Faulkner Gallery at the Santa Barbara Public Library.  The showings, which philanthropist Sara McCune is helping to fund, will be followed by a discussion. The documentaries will also be screened at the Lucidity Festival in mid-April.

“Krystal,” made in 1988, is a 15-minute documentary titled after the daughter of Nancy McCradie, a long-time homeless activist who was involved in the founding of the original Homeless Coalition..  It’s about Krystal’s childhood growing up in an RV from birth through high school, and more generally about homelessness in Santa Barbara; it was filmed by two Brooks Institute graduates.

“Streets of Paradise” is a 40-minute documentary about the old coalition from the 1980s. The 2003 film was screened multiple times at the recent Santa Barbara International Film Festival where it was well received.

“Right now, I see 18 and 19 year olds … out on the street with their dogs out there,” McCradie said. “[They are] panhandling and doing whatever they can to stay alive. These people cannot afford college. They cannot afford housing. What is it that they’re going to do?”

McCradie left her position on the Board of Directors of Casa Esperanza Homeless Center to give the homeless people a chance to participate in the executive decision-making at the shelter. Larry Hulse, one of Esperanza’s residents, took her seat. This way, McCradie said, the homeless will have a stronger voice in the running of things. “Unless every man, child and woman is housed in this country, I don’t want to quit,” she said. “I don’t want to get away from the homeless issue. I want to stick with it and see if we can keep on getting better. We got to get better socially. We have to make friends among people who we are afraid of.”

The South Coast Homeless Advisory Committees (SCHCs), Bringing Our Community Home (BOCH) and Common Ground Santa Barbara (CGSB) will soon merge into a single, large organization to fight homelessness in Santa Barbara County.

With the merger, there will be a need for organizations that can help public policy by making recommendations on a range of issues, Allen said.

The coalition’s objective will be to identify and prioritize obstacles and issues homeless people face here and then present them to elected officials..

One of Allen’s proposals for the new coalition is to survey the homeless population in Santa Barbara again, to isolate the health problems and gaps in services. Last year, as part of the countywide Common Ground campaign, five hundred volunteers  interviewed people sleeping outside and asked about their physical and mental health.

The results were used to create a “vulnerability index” which detailed the specific issues facing homeless individuals and determined who was most likely to die on the streets.

“Instead of assuming what the issues are, we can talk to people and figure out what issues are the first priorities,” Allen said.

By Nick St. Oegger

Some of Santa Barbara’s most important homeless outreach organizations could soon be coming together under one banner. Plans to unite Bringing our Community Home (BOCH), Common Ground Santa Barbara, and the South Coast Homeless Advisory Committee (SCHAC) are well under way after a brainstorming summit last November. Since November, a subcommittee made up of Common Ground SB members and BOCH members has been meeting to hash out details of the organization’s structure. Along the way, they have been sharing information and receiving feedback from smaller homeless outreach groups as well as the faith community.

The structure for the new organization will consist of a Leadership Council comprised of elected officials, and smaller committees focused on coordination, community action, and other specifics. One person will serve as a coordinator, making sure all parts of the larger organization are on the same page.

While there have been concerns that this new entity could turn into another bureaucratic dead end, those at the forefront of its creation are taking steps to make sure that doesn’t happen. Rob Fredericks of the Santa Barbara Housing Authority and Common Ground SB, stressed the importance of including all entities who come into contact with the homeless–especially those at the grassroots level. Representatives from volunteer organizations and the faith community will hold positions, as well as those from the city. “We don’t want this to be something like we’ve had before, that’s intractable and doesn’t work,” Mr. Fredericks said. “At the end of the day we want something new that meets the needs of the homeless community.”

Mike Foley, executive director of Casa Esperanza, described the organization as more of a place where the myriad outreach groups could meet to get work done effectively. He noted that there are many groups and individuals doing effective work right now that aren’t a part of any official structure. The new organization will provide a way for those groups to affiliate themselves with the larger network. “The goal is to form a place where groups doing that work could come together in a way that’s part of a larger structure designed to meet certain goals,” Mr. Foley said.

The work that’s been done in the year since the Common Ground Survey was taken cannot be minimized. To date, coordination between homeless outreach groups and officials from the Public Health Department and city Housing Authority has resulted in 36 individuals and 17 families (a total of 90 people) from the vulnerability index being housed. This new structure will improve communication and coordination between everyone involved in the homeless community. Homeless advocate Nancy Kapp commented on the effectiveness of collaboration, “Working together allows the groups to focus on individual homeless [people] who need care.”

Speculation surrounding the full time coordinator position has been profuse; but uppermost have been questions like who will he or she answer to, what sort of power they will have and who will fill the position. Mr. Fredericks said someone who has been very active in the county, who knows the issues in the homeless community and is result oriented will ideally fill the position. “We want to get the best person for the job, and we know there’s somebody out there who can do it,” he said.

The coordinator will be accountable to the larger Coordination Committee of the organization (and not the Leadership Council). That committee will be involved in the hiring process.  His or her role will be more that of a communicator and planner than someone who is a decision making voice for the organization. Mr. Foley explained. “What’s necessary is a coordinator, someone who can communicate and bring people together, not give speeches, and that’s what’s been created,” he said.

Yet with all the talk of committees and coordinators, it’s easy to lose track of the most important constituency in the process: the homeless. Formerly homeless activist and writer Wayne Mellinger, Ph.D., believes those in charge of the process have the best of intentions, but worries that the voices of the homeless are not being heard. “We are talking about historically marginalized groups here, who are traumatized by years of abuse, who have been beaten down and silenced by structural violence of systems that really do not care.”

When leadership positions for the new organization were recently made public, Mr. Mellinger was dismayed at the lack of representation from the homeless community. In response, he started Seat at the Table, a grassroots coalition aimed at letting the voices of the homeless be heard. He hopes this new group will play a role in the new organization, giving homeless people a direct line to decision makers, and a way to share their thoughts about the process. “We need time to find our voice, work through the organic processes of developing leadership, and organizing ourselves…we don’t want anyone to talk for us anymore.”

More concrete details about the organization will be sorted out in the months to come. The South Coast Homeless Advisory Committee will give their final comments at a meeting on April 12th, and from there the organization will go before City Council and the County Board of Supervisors for approval. As far as what the new organization will be named, Mr. Fredericks hinted that it might retain the Common Ground moniker, which has become well recognized in the community. It’s an appropriate title for an organization that forces many groups to collaborate to tackle Santa Barbara’s homeless issues in a brand new way.

Photo by Isabelle Walker. (Activists and county and city government employees discusse details of a new homeless services organization at a summit in November.)