Welcome to Isla Vista’s COVID Village

Santa Barbara County’s 3rd District Supervisor is swatting at Isla Vista’s long-festering transient influx by building 20 tiny homes, less than six feet apart, for 40 people in downtown Anisq’Oyo’ Park. The six-month temporary housing falls short of accommodating the adjacent 80-plus encampment.

Taxpayers informed Joan Hartmann about growing transient camps in February — pre-COVID — and she is only now responding as winter and the virus set in. With $900,000 in “use it or lose it” COVID funds, Hartmann hastily co-opted Isla Vista’s Community Center as her “Town Hall” alongside a parking lot owned by our Recreation and Park District.

Isla Vista parks are an eternal magnet for transients with documented drug and alcohol problems. Over the spring and summer conditions got so bad that park “regulars” were afraid; in August one such individual was severely beaten in the park and later died of a drug overdose. Yards away, UCSB’s Bank of America lecture hall houses an Alcohol and Drug office — closed, as are the school’s empty dorms, to those outside the ivory tower.