The City of Santa Barbara wants to move homeless populations who live in encampments into a hotel.
In a nearly three-hour meeting Tuesday in which the City Council almost agreed to an option that would have set up a tent encampment on its airport property near Goleta, the council voted 7-0 to work with City Net to contract with an undisclosed hotel.
City leaders did not reveal the actual hotel, but they will before their next meeting on the issue in three weeks. If the hotel project falls through, the council voted 5-2 on a backup plan for the tent encampments — the commuter lot at the corner of Carrillo and Castillo streets.
The recent Westside Loma Fire, although it was not started by an individual living in an encampment, pushed city leaders to scramble for a way to move people out of encampments, which present a fire risk.
The cost of the program is estimated at $1.4 million to $1.8 million for staff and City Net time, and other expenses. The site would be used for about 50 people for 120 days to six months.
Tuesday’s meeting was full of swerves and surprises, with Councilman Oscar Gutierrez even suggesting eminent domain as a possible option to find land for encampments, a suggestion that was quickly stamped out by Mayor Cathy Murillo.
City staff presented three sites — the Carrillo-Castillo commuter lot, the Louise Lowry Davis Center parking lot, and the parking lot at the Santa Barbara Airport, which is city land but is surrounded by Goleta property. City officials, however, approved the idea of the site without having any formal talks with Goleta on using such a site. The airport site is near Old Town Goleta, which is largely a working-class Latino community.
Most of the discussion at the meeting involved which backup site the city should use. Murillo pushed for the airport parking lot, the site of the former drive-in, on Hollister Avenue.
“I like the option of going with the motel rooms, if we can, but also looking at the airport space,” she said. “I know we can make it comfortable and inviting for people to lay down their burdens, put their stuff in a safe place. We want to create a home for people to get services and start to address some of the challenges they are facing.”
A few of the public speakers expressed concern, however, with housing people in tents.
Chuck Flacks, a consultant as well as an activist for people experiencing homelessness, said that a sanctioned encampment is a “recipe for disaster,” citing the People’s Park in Isla Vista. He urged the city to pursue a hotel.
“Unless we provide humane housing-type alternatives,” Flacks said, “if we just put tents in a parking lot, it is not going to work and it’s going to cause more problems.”
Murillo disagreed.
“I am supportive of the airport location,” she said. “The city of Santa Barbara has the Salvation Army, the Rescue Mission, PATH, Transition House, and we do need to find a location that we can control. It’s land that we control. There’s transportation, there are stores nearby for people; it’s not out in the middle of nowhere. It’s right there in the heart of the South Coast.”
Murillo claimed that she and City Administrator Paul Casey had a conversation with Goleta officials “about two months ago,” but city staff earlier in the meeting said there had been no formal talks between Goleta and Santa Barbara.
“They are going to be so far from the services, I feel that they won’t go, or they will start wandering around,” Councilwoman Alejandra Gutierrez said. “I understand they are going to have services provided on this site, and I understand that land is city property, but technically we are going to be in the Goleta area.”
Councilwoman Meagan Harmon agreed. She said that a sanctioned campsite is not the best way to serve those who are unsheltered.
“I am not convinced that this is the best path forward, nor am I convinced that it is the best use of funds,” Harmon said. “I am loathed to make a decision tonight without engaging the community in which would be primarily affected. There are residential neighborhoods located near to this lot, primarily low-income neighborhoods, and it feels a bit to me that we are just moving the problem to someone else’s backyard.”
Harmon said she wanted to make sure that Santa Barbara is a good partner in the discussion, and that “’partners’ implies engagement from the very beginning.”
“I have some discomfort with picking a site that is essentially in the city of Goleta, without knowing the city of Goleta is supportive of it,” she said.
Harmon also opposed the commuter lot at the corner of Carrillo and Castillo streets. The area is in her district. A few years ago, it also was the proposed site of a tiny homes project that was panned by the neighborhood. Harmon said there was much distrust among the neighbors and that the spot is also in a residential area.
Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon also said that a tent encampment is not the answer. Finding a hotel should be the only way to go. The city already partnered with a hotel in Santa Barbara to house homeless people living under the Cacique Street underpass during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I really don’t want the backup plan to be tents,” Sneddon said. “I want the backup plan to be scattered hotel sites, or look for a different hotel site.”
Sneddon said a hotel offers more dignity to those who are without shelter, particularly women, families and children. She said she would support a hotel in Goleta.
“That, to me, doesn’t have as big of an impact as, ‘Let us take our homeless neighbors here and move them to Goleta,’” Sneddon said. “Even though we own the airport property space, that doesn’t mean that’s our neighborhood.”
Murillo continued to push for the airport property.
“I don’t have a problem with tents, as long as it is done well,” Murillo said. “I don’t think anyone is going to be on a bare asphalt ground, so we will do a little bit better than that.”
Councilman Mike Jordan disagreed with the mayor’s statement.
“I am less optimistic than you, madame mayor, that a blank, empty asphalt lot can really be attractive, but an asphalt lot framed with landscaping and shade can be much more attractive,” he said.
Councilman Eric Friedman pushed for the city to start conversations with Santa Barbara County to share the problem.
“This is a complex issue we are trying to address,” he said. “There are health and safety issues in fire-prone areas, but we also want to ensure that we have a program that will help our most vulnerable and help resistant individuals get into services so they are no longer on the streets and having impacts. We don’t have the ability not to act anymore.”
Some of the people who spoke from the public also said that hotels would be more attractive than asphalt to people who chose to live outdoors and in encampments.
“Hotel rooms are the best bets when you are trying to build incentives,” said Jeff Schaffer, director of initiatives for SB ACT.
In the end, the council shot down the Goleta airport site by a vote of 5-2, with only Murillo and Oscar Gutierrez in support. The council instead chose the Castillo-Carrillo commuter lot as a backup plan. That vote was 5-2, with Murillo, Oscar Gutierrez, Alejandra Gutierrez, Friedman and Jordan supporting the site for an encampment. Harmon and Sneddon united in opposition to the lot, expressing concerns that they opposed tent encampments altogether and that this one also would be close to a neighborhood.
“I am totally opposed to the Carrillo-Castillo lot,” Harmon said. “I do not believe this is the right site for this backup location.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.