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Nuz

Grounds for Trouble

Jahva House is the latest in a growing number of downtown businesses to be stormed by self-styled homeless activist Robert Norse and his gang. The latest brouhaha was to protest the "yuppie" Jahva House's "anti-homeless" policy. According to Norse, a family was ejected for buying and bringing a cup of coffee to a former customer who previously was barred from the Jahva House premises. This, explains Norse in an accompanying handbill, was only the latest in a series of evictions by Jahva House co-owner Kevin Foehr and manager Stewart Cooper of those "less fashionable" community members, including Earth Firsters, the ever-popular Won Ton Dave Jacobs and--surprise --Norse himself.

Well, every story has two sides, it appears. According to Cooper, the "family" has been a familiar sight at Jahva House since it opened. Cooper says the man and woman have been asked politely over the years to keep shoes on their kid--a Health Department regulation--to refrain from smoking in the doorway and to lower their voices when they are loudly accusing Cooper of being a "wage-slave to the system" and a "fascist."

Norse contends the group was thrown out for buying a cup of coffee for an alleged bike thief who had been banished from Jahva House the previous year.

Cooper says the trio was thrown out for "screaming abusively and in an aggressive manner to an employee" after the employee asked him to please not buy coffee for the hot bike man.

Jahva House may be guilty of many crimes, but harboring yuppies does not appear to be one of them. And, judging by the range of faces--from cops to cuckoos--that show up for a cup o' joe, there's not much discrimination taking place within its warm walls, either.

Yet Norse does raise an interesting point about discrimination. What are the rights of businesses who quite wisely discriminate against those who shove unwanted literature in the faces of other customers, scream epithets at employees or walk off with things they did not pay for? Norse has a few solutions--actually, they're called "demands" on his handbill: "a fair hearing policy if problems arise" and "an agreement to mediate future disputes."

Sounds fair to Nuz. It may also help to shed light on why some of the business people who have been the target of Norse's accusations of anti-poor policies in the past--Neal Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in particular--have also been scorned by the Republican rich for their efforts on the part of the homeless, the poor and the disenfranchised. These hearing policies could help explain how so many "anti-homeless" businesses could peacefully exist in a city that spends more per capita on homeless services than any other city in the country.

Says Cooper, "In the 15 years I've lived here, I've watched Mr. Kahn (Robert Norse Kahn) alienate everyone who has tried to listen to him, from the homeless to the City Council. He's not a homeless activist, he's a self-promoter."

Norse disagrees. "People are critical of me because they feel I confront power in ways that they find uncomfortable. The reason I do that is that more seemly methods fail."

Threatened Habitat

The latest issue of activist newsletter Loose Cannon takes aim at Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Neal Coonerty, depicting him in a cartoon as a representative of "Massive Homeowner Subsidies," squeezing the money from a gasping renter.

Why all the enmity? Well, for one, Loose Cannon publisher Jerry Simpson was banished from the bookstore as of Dec. 20. According to Coonerty, the skirmish began in November when the bookshop set up a display for Habitat for Humanity, a national organization that helps low-income people build houses for themselves. Habitat provides interest-free loans and, in exchange, the recipient provides 500 hours of "sweat equity" (read: labor) in the construction process. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the bookshop donated a percentage of book sales to Habitat's local chapter.

But that didn't sit right with pamphleteer Simpson, who has been rallying against homeowner subsidies--most notably tax deductions on home mortgage interest--which he believes "screw" renters. Simpson admits he has repeatedly taped small protest handbills to the bookstore's Habitat display and promotional posters for the charity drive.

"Dear Nuz, the enclosed [handbill] has been appearing regularly on the 'Habitat' display table," reads a note left at Metro Santa Cruz by Simpson, "and on Neal Coonerty's self-congratulatory blue posters, concerning his support for government subsidies to homeowners such as Neal Coonerty. Boy is he pissed."

Yeah, he's pissed. Coonerty fired off an angry private letter to Simpson (later published in Loose Cannon) in which he forbade Simpson from entering his store or the adjoining Georgiana's Cafe. "You vandalize the displays at Bookshop and publicly accuse Habitat when you do not have a clue what you are talking about. If you are going to open your imbecile mouth, at least find out the facts," Coonerty wrote.

According to Coonerty, Simpson sent him a letter sometime after Thanksgiving, objecting to the bookshop's support of Habitat. Simpson's main objection, Coonerty says, was that Habitat homeowners would receive mortgage interest tax deductions. They do not. In fact, the loans are interest-free. What's more, all of Habitat's income comes from private donations, says local volunteer Ethel Plocher.

Simpson says he didn't pen the letter Coonerty cited, and claims he was aware that Habitat homeowners don't get mortgage-interest deductions.

Coonerty says he discarded the letter after reading it.

Regardless, Simpson is ostensibly against any type of homeowner subsidy that he thinks directly or indirectly shifts a greater tax burden to renters. "These policies artificially drive up the price of housing, which in turns drives up the price of rents," says Simpson. "If we did away with these subsidies the prices of homes would plunge. The people in Congress are all homeowners. It's thievery!"

Coonerty, however, has no sympathy for Simpson's crusade. "Habitat for Humanity is not the political base of subsidies to homeowners," he says. "I think him picking Habitat as a target for his campaign against mortgage interest deduction is politically inept."

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