Sharon Byrne's Types of Homeless in Santa Barbara

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Working Definitions of Types of Homeless in Santa Barbara

by  on MAY 31, 2012 in NEWS, SHARON BYRNE
By Sharon Byrne for El Smurfo, regarding recent Views on Santa Barbara’s Homeless.
Grifter: travelling homeless, make their way up and down the coast, or across the country. Come into Santa Barbara at various times of year to camp, stay at Casa Esperanza, and panhandle. Engage in drinking and drug use. Sometimes get into fights, shoplift. Often arrive and depart in packs together.
Transitional Homeless: you’ll never see them, unless you let someone temporarily living in their car sleep in your driveway. Homeless for 2 minutes to 2 days to 2 weeks – they want a job, a place to live, and to return to a normal life ASAP. Despise shelters. Panhandle out of sheer desperation, if ever. If long-term stable employment or housing is unattainable, they can become chronically homeless over time, moving from the car to hotel rooms, wherever they can. This group contains families, and is the focus of news stories on distressing economic conditions. The vast majority find their way back to a stable life. This is also the group referred to when admonished ‘we’re all just one paycheck away…’
Addicts: Think of the crowd at State St at Haley, or lower Milpas. Alcohol or drug issue brought them into homelessness, though some do have places to stay. Panhandle, steal, shoplift – anything to get that next fix. Sleep on the street as consequence of addiction. Thrown out of homes, shelters, for substance abuse issues. In and out of jail for public inebriation, drug use, drug sales. Some move around to different towns, check into detox or shelter, but often go right back to using. Over time, if they remain addicted, they can become chronically homeless…
Chronic Homeless: homeless 5 years or more, stay in same area, don’t travel unless to escape dangerous situation, often beset with addiction and mental illness issues. Very hard to get off the street, and relapse is common. Multiple citations for open container, illegal camping, urination – nuisance crimes. In and out of shelters, and some are banned from the area shelters. Some of the most chronically homeless will not panhandle. It’s a bit of a pride thing with them, and they’ll do odd jobs or get SSI. Mostly want to be left alone, but do sometimes have a social network of similar chronic homeless that help each other out.
Felons: look like homeless men, but edgier – newer clothes, tattoos, haircuts. Newly released from prison or jail back to jurisdiction where they offended (even if not their actual home). Appear homeless, but will rob and attack other homeless. Will accost and aggressively panhandle, swearing they just need gas or a night of lodging…the car broke down, etc. They will often resort to the behaviors for which they were incarcerated: drug use and trafficking, assault, breaking and entering, theft, and sexual assault.
Avoid if possible, and call SBPD if you see them lingering in your neighborhood, or encounter them in a less busy area.
Yoach: the anarchist goth set that congregates at De La Guerra Plaza and in front of the Habit. Rack up $30 an hour from LA Tourists and SB Bleeding Hearts to buy cigs, booze and weed. They hail from Portland, Seattle, Austin, and other liberal cities. Usually 25 and under. NOT actually homeless, just ‘checking out, occupying, and doing the vagabond thing.’ Camp by freeways, hitchhike to next town, hold up offensive (sometimes humorous) signs on State St, travel in packs, usually with pit bulls in tow, guitars, giant mountaineering backpacks, and dreadlocks.
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About Sharon Byrne

Though long interested in public policy, Sharon Byrne found herself unwittingly thrust into municipal issues when she took a sabbatical from her corporate career, and moved to West Downtown in late 2008. The reasonable price reflected a neighborhood in serious decay, suffering from violence: a shooting and 2 murders within 3 months. She helped organize the neighborhood with other determined women, and began to see how a series of municipal decisions had created conditions that breed decay. Her work on neighborhood issues, coupled with advocacy against the proliferation of dispensaries near schools and low-income neighborhoods, landed her a spot on the Franklin Advisory Committee on the Eastside. That led to the founding of the Milpas Community Association, a neighborhood coalition dedicated to improving conditions in and around the Milpas corridor. She serves on the Neighborhood Advisory Council, a city of Santa Barbara committee that advocates on behalf of neighborhoods below Canon Perdido. Her education in engineering, with a master's in psychology, gives her an unusual mix of skills and insights in her work on improving the quality of life for neighborhoods. She's a first-generation American, loves blues music, and has a beloved daughter currently thriving at Santa Barbara High.
View all posts by Sharon Byrne →

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6 Responses to Working Definitions of Types of Homeless in Santa Barbara

  1. At home May 31, 2012 at 11:06 am #
    Brilliant. Critical to the solution is first eliminating the one overly-broad umbrella word “homeless”.
    Time to re-open state care institutions for those who cannot care for themselves. That was the one clear compassionate answer and we need to go back to that. ASAP
    Offer a degree of a social safety net for those **from** our community in the very temporary state with limits and clear guidelines for support services.
    And the rest (majority) are not in need of care or money; just a different Santa Barbara welcoming message: Hit the road, Jack and don’t come back.
    REPLY
  2. Sharon May 31, 2012 at 5:52 pm #
    Excellent. Good distinctions. Helpful.
    REPLY
  3. Boycott Boy May 31, 2012 at 7:28 pm #
    I like to keep it simple…
    Those clawing and scratching for every opportunity and those letting every opportunity slip by….
    REPLY
  4. Nancy June 1, 2012 at 9:57 am #
    Reading Sharon’s latest article has me feeling a little disturbed. I know Sharon and am considered a friend of hers. I wish however that her articles about homelessness did not show so much hatred for the homeless situation. There are all sorts of people in this world. “There but for the Grace of God, go I.”
    I have been considered homeless in the City of Santa Barbara for many years. Living in vehicles has been my bane since my income did not come give me the monies to come up to the price of rental housing in this community. I raised my children in motorhomes and stayed within my budget that luckily my jobs, that I was able to maintain, gave me.
    Just because one is homeless does not mean that one is a criminal. I know most of the homeless community. So many of the men on the street are wonderful people. They are sweet, some sick with the throws of alcoholism and other drugs but have always treated me with respect and love. Some have mental illness and it is heartbreaking to see them neglected and treated so badly by today’s society. So much work has got to be done for these people by the rest of us who are lucky enough not to be mentally ill. Job training needs to be created by Trade Schools for the younger men we can label as youches, grifters, felons, transients and all sorts of choice biases that we who fear for a living can muster. Santa Barbara is doing a wonderful job with a part of society who just cannot keep up. Restorative Policing, discipline in the shelters, and the gifts of stranger’s talents do work at solving the economic upheavals in today’s society. Do you know what I did when I was growing up? I walked across America for the homeless. It was the adventure of a life time. What these younger kids, who are unable to go on to pay the tuition it takes to get into college need is a way to create small businesses. But can they buck all the permits it takes to get started? Guess what? The people you see hanging on our streets will someday get tired of it and will go on to better things in life. With intervention that can happen. I have been volunteering my life with the homeless and helping with that kind of intervention for years. I know so many people who once lived on the streets who are now working and raising families of their own. Sometimes it just takes a little help. And Sharon knows this. She and I have worked side by side helping people get into housing.
    REPLY
  5. Sharon Byrne June 1, 2012 at 8:30 pm #
    Nancy, I think it’s helpful for a lot of folks dealing with the negative effects of homelessness is to understand that it’s not one-size-fits-all. We tend to collapse them all into one broad category of people in a semi-permanent state of despair, drug-addicted, and mentally ill. You didn’t fit that category, clearly. The young set on State are not homeless. They’re traveling, hanging out, have an anarchist bent, and panhandling. They’re causing quite a few issues on State. You and I know quite a few chronic homeless that don’t panhandle, as a matter of honor. So not all homeless panhandle, and not all panhandlers are homeless. This post is a follow-on to one I did a few weeks back where one of the better commentators here noted there’s quite a bit of diversity in what constitutes ‘homeless’. As you say, we work quite a bit with this community, and not everyone knows what we do. We’ve also talked about this not being the best town for employment, also true for the housed! I agree Santa Barbara does a lot more than most cities, but assuming the youth anarchist set are the same as the chronically homeless is misguided. Milpas is struggling, since October, particularly with the felon set. McDonald’s, Tri-County Produce, and Habit employees have all been assaulted in recent months, in their businesses, by this group. It’s about using common sense, and not painting everyone with the same broad brush.
    REPLY
  6. Spin June 1, 2012 at 9:45 pm #
    Living on the streets in a car or RV is illegal. Therefore, one is a law-breaker. No one has the right to come to a community they cannot afford, and then demand to live there anyway they want. It does not work this way. There are trade schools already and they are affordable – look at all the trades taught at SBCC. Please, can we stop this broken record, Nancy?
    REPLY

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