Handling Homelessness During COVID

The tent city in Isla Vista is only the most visible manifestation of the chronic problem in Santa Barbara County of people unable to find a place to live. It’s matched by the vans and cars parked at Pershing Park below City College, on which one of them is written: “Genocide of Homeless in Santa Barbara.” And any empathy most feel for the situation of homelessness is challenged by the fear of fire — most recently in the form of two big flareups along Highway 101 when a campfire under the trees “escaped” into the surrounding vegetation.

The quantity of people living “on the street” has become more of a visible issue during the coronavirus pandemic. The easy spread of the virus had the Centers for Disease Control strongly advising cities and counties to leave homeless camps in place. In Santa Barbara County, it is in out-of-the-way places under trees and behind bushes where many homeless people attempt to live. About 600 others are living in cars and vans, according to January’s Point-in-Time count of the homeless population, one-third more than in 2019.

In an attempt to limit pandemic clusters, California used $150 million from its federal CARES funding for Project Roomkey, which hired motel rooms in which to house the most vulnerable among the homeless population, or those at risk of catching a seriously bad case of COVID-19. In the City of Santa Barbara, not only did the program house dozens of people but their stable living situation enabled social services workers to find permanent housing for many of them.