Talk of the Bay, with Chris Krohn, Tuesday, December 20th: Pushed Out Again and No Where to Go!

Homelessness response on the part of the city of Santa Cruz has reached perhaps a breaking point. The city council is poised to send in the cops and clear the Benchlands camp over the next four months. This would be a great relief to parents, children and other park-goers if there were a place for campers to go.  If this move is approved on Tuesday, as Talk of the Bay goes on the air, City staff will be asking the council to “Authorize the City Manager to execute an emergency procurement Agreement, in a form to be approved by the City Attorney, between the City of Santa Cruz and Clean Team Associates in the amount of $280,000 to remove encampment debris in the San Lorenzo Park Benchlands.” This edict appears not to just remove non-human “debris,” but the people who are camping as well. Talk of the Bay goes into the Benchlands camp this week to speak with campers. What will they do if evicted? Where will they go? Ami Chen Mills will join host Chris Krohn for a show we are calling, “Pushed Out Again and No Where to Go.” Chen Mills will go inside the camp and report what she sees in real time.

In the second part of the show we go to New York City where a housing crisis similar to Santa Cruz’ is gentrifying neighborhoods and pushing low-income people out of parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Billy Talen, aka, know to many Santa Cruzans as Reverend Billy, will go one-on-one with Talk of the Bay host Chris Krohn, comparing the low wages and high cost of housing in the New York area with that of Santa Cruz. Rev. Billy is perhaps best know as the leader of the Stop Shopping Choir. The Stop Shopping Choir’s latest album can be heard here. Join us this week on Talk of the Bay, Tuesday from 5-6pm for some local perspectives with national consequences.