Lynn Robinson has stepped up scrutiny over homeless services.
It’s much too soon, Vice Mayor Lynn Robinson says, to discuss any cuts to the Homeless Services Center’s day programs.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported last week that Robinson “will consider calling for the reduction or elimination of $42,000 in city funding for the facility's day services.” Robinson, who serves on the city’s community programs committee, which makes funding recommendations for social services, told us she carefully considers funding every year and has heard many strong reactions lately about cuts to the center.
“I look at that paragraph, and this has got to be the hot paragraph that got rearranged in everyone’s mind,” Robinson says of the Sentinel’s story. “I’m not in a position to talk about funding right now.”
Robinson originally wrote Homeless Services director Monica Martinez last month, as the Sentinel reported, saying she could longer support “business as usual,” based on incidents she observed near the shelter.
Robinson says politics from public safety hawks played no role in her position. “I’m focusing on getting positive outcomes out of the programs the city funds,” she says.
Claudia Brown, president of the center’s board of directors, says the shelter was built to deal with homeless issues, not create them. “There were problems that we have solved like soup kitchens down on Pacific Avenue for example, where business leaders wanted us to make sure people were fed away from downtown,” Brown says.
Annalica Cube, co-founder of Take Back Santa Cruz, has supported changes to the center and says the city needs to start weeding criminals out of the larger population and thinks a reform could be part of that. She hopes any cuts would be reinvested in keeping the Harvey West neighborhood safe.
“There are a lot of great things going on at the Homeless Services Center, and there are a lot of things going on at Homeless Services that aren’t very great,” Cube says. “I can’t speak for the councilmembers, but there needs to be a change at the center in regards to safety and policy.”
Inbal Yassur works for the River Street Shelter, which shares the Coral Street Campus with the city’s Homeless Services Center and the county’s Homeless Person’s Health Project. She doesn’t think Homeless Services cuts that send at-risk people to the streets will do Santa Cruz any favors. “Cutting budgets will just make this worse,” Yassur says. “That’s not the solution.”
