When Marci Huston came to the podium during the Aug. 9 San Benito County Board of Supervisors’ meeting during the public comment portion of the agenda, it was abundantly clear she was not happy about the homeless situation and how it is affecting her business, The Garden Mart, on San Benito Street. Nor was she happy about how the board—she singled out Supervisor Robert Rivas, in particular—apparently has not responded to her numerous pleas for help in trying to deal with the homeless around her business.
“I keep trying to deal with you guys and I keep getting ignored,” said Huston, who lost a close race to be supervisor back in 1996. “I’m having to deal with the city, the sheriff, the cops, with the DA, which I’ve told you all before. The problem is everybody is blaming everybody else.”
Out of frustration, she said she even called Superior Court Judge Steven Sanders.
“Of all the people I called, you (Rivas) were the only one who didn’t call me back,” Huston said, “but I could get a superior court judge to call me back.”
She said after repeated attempts to bring about a meeting of concerned officials, she was back before the board to tell them “a little story” about the latest incident involving the homeless at her business. She recounted how a man came to the front entrance to her business covered in “poop” running down his pants as she held up a sign for the board to see that spelled s**t.
“This guy was at my front door and he wanted us to hose him off,” she said. “This is what I’m dealing with. I’m at my wits end. Mr. Rivas and (Hollister Mayor) Ignacio (Velazquez) are the chiefs of this town, and this town is going into the toilet. What do you think I should do?”
Huston finished her comments with a cryptic message: “If you don’t take care of my problem, then my problem is going to come to you. If you’re not going to protect my private property rights, then you can deal with the same private property rights. If I need to spell that out, I will.”
Under state law, the board could not respond to her comments, but respond they did, as did other officials, throughout the meeting, long after she had already left the building.
A few minutes later, during the department head announcement part of the agenda, Ray Espinosa, the county’s chief administrative officer, asked Hollister Police Chief David Westrick to give a statement on homeless issues.
As the chief was approaching the podium, Rivas spoke out, “Contrary to what Ms. Huston may think, we actually have been working on it.”
Westrick agreed that there is a “homeless problem” and there is an issue with the city’s capacity to deal with it. He said Rivas and himself had been on the Homeless Coalition to work on the problem.
“Our problem in law enforcement is we’re at the tip of the pyramid and we don’t have much foundation to support it and that is all of our fault, and we have to acknowledge that,” Westrick said. “If a police officer contacts an indigent folk, and they have a specific problem, we don’t have very many ways to refer them to programs here. Sometimes we even refer them out of county.”
Westrick said even though the city and county have been trying to work on solutions to homeless issues, they need to work faster. He said Hollister is safe and relatively crime-free, but not everything is being done as well as it could be.
“It’s not a crime to be homeless. It’s not a crime to be poor,” he said. “The tip of the spear should not be law enforcement. We have homeless problems in the county and the city. We need to build up our capacity here and I think we need to endeavor to do that.”
As the chief started to leave the podium, Supervisor Anthony Botelho commented: “It’s too bad that Ms. Huston left. She has a business to run and we all understand that. We are trying to work on the issue, and I’m sure the city is, as well. But what she’s concerned about is people hanging out on private property.”
Botelho said to Westrick that he was right in that it’s not a crime to be homeless or poor, then asked, “Is it a crime to loiter on private property by businesses that don’t want that?”
Westrick answered: “It is a crime and I don’t think anyone in California has figured out how to fix it. It’s a misdemeanor for trespassing, therefore you can probably write them a ticket, but because they’re indigent they have no ability to pay the ticket. Then you start this circle. We need to break that. We need to be proactive with our outreach and social services. There are folks out there that need mental health, medical help, they need a job. The last thing they need is for a law enforcement officer to do what a law enforcement does. I understand sometimes we’re the only ones to call, but before that would be services.”
Louie Valdez, county analyst and clerk of the board, was asked to speak about what he had been able to determine when he spoke to Huston on Aug. 8, on behalf of Espinosa and Rivas, about her complaints. Valdez said he walked around her property and determined that there were a couple of possible “logistic” solutions in which additional fencing might be installed, but said south of her business is private property and it isn’t possible to compel the owner to also put up a fence.
“We have responded,” he said, “but as I explained to Ms. Huston, this is a multi-faceted problem and there has to be a service component to the intervention of these folks who are homeless.”
Supervisor Jamie De La Cruz said he had also visited Huston’s business and told her that just because Rivas or others don’t call her personally, it doesn’t mean they haven’t directed staff to make the appropriate connections and to follow up. He said Huston was not satisfied with his response.
“She wants the homeless community to vacate from outside her property, which, again, was somebody else’s property,” De La Cruz said.
Later in the meeting, as 22 consent agenda items were up for vote, Supervisor Jerry Muenzer pulled for discussion one that would approve a contract with In Studio Architecture for $66,400 to draw up plans for the new homeless shelter on San Felipe Road.
“The only reason I pulled this was because it was alluded (by Huston) to earlier in our meeting today, and also our last meeting, that the county is doing nothing to solve the homeless situation, and I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that though we may be moving at the speed of government, we are doing something,” he said. “We have purchased a building for our new homeless service center and we’re getting it rehabilitated and getting it up and running.”
Muenzer added: “It’s not just the building, it’s the programs that go along with it. I think that Jim Rydingsword (director of San Benito County Health and Human Services) is working very hard to develop those programs and we’re coordinating as best we can with the city. It’s really important that the community recognize this.”
While the board could not “officially” comment on Huston’s claims, Hollister resident Marty Richman was under no such constraint and fired a salvo toward the board by proclaiming: “This is the way people who are not influential in this county are treated, just like this lady (Huston) who was here, who came with a specific problem, people in front of her business, where she has an investment, and although you’re ‘working on the problem,’ as Supervisor Muenzer said, ‘at the speed of government,’ she may not be able to last the speed of government.”
Richman challenged the board that if it were one of their businesses they would not be saying ‘we’re working on it,’ they would be saying, ‘get somebody out there and get my problem solved.’
He compared the property next to Huston’s as “ugly America,” and said sarcastically: “Why don’t we (new business) go to a town that’s just falling apart?’ is what it looks like when you come into the north end of our town. You have somebody who invested in putting a business in there, which is good for everybody, and they have a specific problem. Let’s do something about solving the problem while we’re waiting for the Taj Mahal, or whatever we’re building over there, to be built. Let’s get something going.”
With no more public comments being offered, Rivas started to ask for a motion in order to vote on the agenda item to approve the architectural fee, but De La Cruz interrupted and asked if he could put Rydingsword on the spot. Rydingsword came up and Cruz asked him that if Huston were to call him on a Saturday morning with a complaint about homeless people, and if he were to call Rydingsword about it, what could be done.
Rydingsword responded that the county is most likely already working with them, in some form, through different social programs, but, ultimately, the real solution is “housing first,” even though the county does not presently have available housing for low income people.
“If we had housing we could go out and say, ‘we have a place for you to stay,’” he said, then acknowledged, “If you’re homeless, it’s a tough one. People don’t understand what it is to be homeless. In my view, there’s no quick solution.”
Rydingsword reminded the board that in 2014 they had asked his department to take the lead on the issue of homelessness, and he told them then that it would be a difficult problem to deal with.
“It has to start with housing and supporting services wrapped around it,” he said. “I don’t know how I can tell you we can get there tomorrow—or Saturday. If you can tell us a way to get there, we’ll be happy to pursue it.”
Botelho admitted how frustrating the situation is and directed the topic back to Huston.
“I know Ms. Huston, personally. I’ve known her for years,” he said. “I feel for her problem. I’ve chased homeless people off my property. I’m not suggesting she do the same, but maybe that’s what needs to happen. But they’d just go someplace else. We’re committed to trying to solve Ms. Huston’s problem, even though it’s in the city. If somebody has a bright idea of how to solve this problem, I’m all ears, and I think everybody on this board is. It’s easy to come up here and rant and rave about it, but it’s a nationwide problem that all of us as a community need to try to address.”
The topic of homelessness kept coming back throughout the meeting under different agenda items, including Hollister Fire Chief Bob Martin Del Campo’s report when he was asked if it might be possible to devise a code in his reporting system to identify when services were rendered to homeless individuals. He said he would check into it and commented that it would be a worthwhile endeavor that might pay off when statistics were needed to identify how much of the fire department’s resources were expended to the homeless segment of the community.
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