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$5 Million in Aid During Pandemic • Two Santa Cruz County Jail Units Closing Due to Staff Shortage
COMMUNITY NEWS $5 Million in Aid During Pandemic
The Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County has facilitated close to $5 million in direct relief to the community in the wake of the pandemic.
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“COVID exacerbated the effects of poverty,” said Maria Elena De La Garza, executive director of CAB, who pointed to day workers as among those worst hit. “These are the folks you see standing outside Home Depot looking for work. They register through our Day Worker Center and we provide dignified job matches through employers or homeowners. When shelter-in-place hit, we went from 150-200 requests a week to zero. They had no revenue to support their families.”
For 55 years, CAB has responded compassionately and proactively to the voices of the low-income community.
Part of a national network of community action agencies, CAB operates six programs that assist more than 10,000 people with low incomes cope with their most pressing needs: Homelessness prevention & intervention, employment & reentry services, immigration legal services, and community building & youth development.
According to Executive Director María Elena De La Garza, the special element driving CAB’s success is the makeup of its staff and board. “What makes us different from other nonprofits is that our board is made up of five low-income residents across Santa Cruz County, five elected officials, and five private sector voices,” she said. “We believe a united community voice will guide our work. Imagine the strength of our board where a low-income representative with firsthand experience in poverty sitting next to a mayor, city council person, decision maker, or a business leader. That’s the profound dynamic that forges CAB’s community response.”
At CAB, more than 50 employees including volunteers work with the community on short & long-term solutions to eliminate poverty and create social change through advocacy and essential services. This is no easy task, considering Santa Cruz County faces the second highest poverty rate in California (to Los Angeles County) when factoring in the cost of living. More than three quarters of CAB’s clients have family incomes less than 100 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.
According to De La Garza, there still remains “a gap or disconnect or lack of knowledge about how people are impacted by poverty, what their assets are and what their needs are.” There are multiple reasons for this, she said, including structural inequities, political rhetoric, miscommunication, and inaccessibility of systems.
During the pandemic, many in the community sought assistance through government channels such as state unemployment benefits and federal stimulus checks. However, many with legal and structural barriers found it difficult or impossible to access such help.
Working through a partnership with the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, CAB was able to provide food and rental assistance within 72 hours of the lockdown.
“It was a phenomenal response from the community, and it continues to this day,” she said. “We’re still not back to where we used to be before the pandemic. We average 50-55 requests a week but it’s not enough to support the day worker community. Our philanthropic partners are key in ensuring their wellbeing.”
In addition, CAB’s Davenport Resource Service Center became a food distribution site for those affected by the pandemic and the raging wildfires of 2020. “We were able to help folks evacuate when fires hit, hand out gas cards, groceries, clothing, and other essential supplies.”
Selected by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office as one of 12 agencies to distribute economic relief to undocumented or mixedstatus families in California, CAB played a huge role in the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants program. “We had less than six weeks to set up the program, hiring 18 people,” said De La Garza. “We moved quickly to set up an infrastructure, with bilingual, bicultural people from this community (including someone designated to reach out to indigenous communities) who understood the importance of program and knew how to deliver culturally respectful services”
CAB also expanded its food pantry by partnering with Second Harvest Food Bank, an example of how CAB helps the community thrive through help from committed allies. Such partnerships ensure that thousands of people, faced with critical circumstances, receive the advocacy and essential services they need.
“Moving forward we always focus on hope,” De La Garza said. “We have a window of time to change systems locally. Taking what we learned through the pandemic and fire response, through the Black Lives Matter and the pro-immigrant movements, we can impact change. Communities have solutions and people have responded to the needs of those most vulnerable. That’s hopeful to me.” n •••
For more info, visit www.cabinc.org or call (831) 763-2147, ext. 216.
— María Elena De La Garza, Executive Director, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County
Two Santa Cruz County Jail Units Closing Due to Staff Shortage
Two units in the Santa Cruz County Corrections Facilities will be temporarily closing due to a shortage of corrections staff, according to Sheriff Jim Hart.
The S Unit in the Rountree Facility in Watsonville, which houses 19 inmates, and Blaine Street Women’s Facility in Santa Cruz, which is housing six female inmates, will be closed for six to twelve months, according to an announcement from the Sheriff’s Office.
In addition, five patrol deputies will be moved to the Corrections Bureau.
The current population at Blaine Street is six and the population of S Unit is 19. These measures will allow for more staffing in the Main Jail and reduce mandatory overtime for corrections staff, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
A Grand Jury report in June found the jail has been operating with minimal staffing and mandatory overtime, “constantly going in and out of the units like yo-yos.”
In addition to booking and releasing inmates, their duties include mandatory hourly safety checks, serving three meals per day, collecting dirty laundry and distributing clean laundry, distributing and collecting grooming supplies, distributing commissary items purchased by inmates, dealing with requests by individual inmates, supervising inmate movements in and out of the housing units, supervising open time and assuring that inmates are in their assigned cells when it’s time for lock down.
The corrections budget is budgeted for 151 positions, with 11 unfilled at the time of the grand jury investigation. Tamario Smith, 21, who had kidney disease and schizophrenia and was being held for domestic battery, died in jail in May 2020 after drinking too much water. His family claimed in a federal lawsuit that he did not get adequate medical care.
Hart fired two female correctional officers in 2020 after they were accused of having sexual activity with inmates.
And the pandemic, resulting in positive Covid-19 tests for jail staffers in 2020, put further strain on scheduling.
The Grand Jury recommended the Board of Supervisors establish a Sheriff Oversight Board or Inspector General and for the sheriff to request more funding for the jail budget.
“Corrections Officers have been working mandatory overtime for several years and it is just too much,” said Fifth District Supervisor Bruce McPherson, who chairs the board. “I support Sheriff Hart’s decision to temporarily close two of the smaller housing facilities while his team works to hire more officers.” n
To read a Grand Jury excerpt, see https:// tpgonlinedaily.com/grand-jury-minimal-jailstaffing-leads-to-injustice/
