A recently released assessment of Project Roomkey, the pandemic-era emergency homeless motel housing, highlighted Santa Cruz County as one of five community case studies.
A recently released assessment of Project Roomkey, the pandemic-era emergency homeless motel housing, highlighted Santa Cruz County as one of five community case studies.
As the city has begun to take a hard look at the state of homelessness locally, the Watsonville City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday on plans to remove a private-property homeless encampment used by an estimated 20-40 people off Airport Boulevard.
"The city of Santa Cruz also late last year cleared a homeless encampment from the San Lorenzo Park benchlands with approximately 225 people," the Editorial Board writes. "Santa Cruz was able to take down the camp, in part, because of efforts the city and county are making to find temporary and permanent housing for people who are homeless."
Between February 2022 and 2023, however, homelessness declined substantially to 1,804 people, the county's lowest population recorded in more than two decades.