Santa Cruz: From Butterfly Haven to Gentrification's Grip - A Barber's Tale
A Haircut, a Heartfelt Conversation, and the Vanishing Soul of a Beloved Coastal Town
Today I left the barber feeling rather depressed.
It was a weird kind of depression though. I’m used to being depressed, the feeling of being totally drained. No self worth. The feeling that nothing I do is right, or worth it.
It wasn’t that kind of depressed. Certainly a colloquial version of the word, but not clinically.
I felt sad, defeated, but more alive and aware than usual.
Sure you could chalk it up to the fact that the sun is out today. Seasonal depression is real. But talking to people always manages to pull me out of my head for long enough that I can actually feel like a part of the world.
My barber was a Santa Cruz native. Someone who had grown up in Santa Cruz, moved around a couple of times, but, like the monarch butterflies, ended up right back at home.
The conversation started out innocuously enough, his kids were sick so he had to reschedule my appointment. I asked about how they were doing. He lamented about the schools new covid policies requiring kids to stay home for at least three days and test negative.
Just a normal guy trying to live in the world.
Something I have picked up about Santa Cruz is a uniquely sad disposition from the locals. Santa Cruz is a town that is undergoing active gentrification. This was an opportunity for me to chat to a local about the changes that they’ve seen.
Behind my coffee shop is a large abandoned building. This building is occasionally used by firefighters for drills, or squatters for shelter before they get snatched up by police.
A big grey husk.
One day a man walked in, he was obviously an SC native. You can tell by the way they dress, by their messy and unclean yet stylistic clothing. He told me he came here to reminisce. I wondered why.
He knew what that old building was. And he had come to see it. It was his childhood elementary school. Full of kids at play, teachers watching them, busy parents. Now totally devoid of life.
I often look out at that building imagining all those kids out there enjoying the great weather near the cliffside. What I see instead is adults barely scraping by coming to the coffee shop to peer over the metal fence and catch a glimpse back to their childhood.
Its so sad I have a hard time coming to terms with what I’m seeing. On the inside I’m thinking to myself,
“Oh fuck thats awful.”
But I don’t have the mental faculties to admit that. Steeped in this knowledge I used this barbershop as an opportunity to interview my barber about the changes to Santa Cruz he’s seen.
Santa Cruz is full of homeless, closed businesses (priced out by the rent competition), and wealthy tourists.
The first thing I asked about was the homeless. I asked if they were SC natives who had it rough and lost it all. He said no.
He said all the natives had to move out and scatter around other towns like Watsonville. The vast majority of homeless people in Santa Cruz are from other states. Santa Cruz has a lot of wealthy people, great programs to support the homeless, and fantastic weather.
What started out as altruism was soon taken advantage of. Other states used SC and California’s open support of homeless communities as an invitation to be even harder on the homeless and ship them out to us.
Thus increasing the number of people being supportive on what would be already minimal resources.
Many of these homeless people are in desperate need of psychological help. With the amount homeless people from other more conservative states being shipped here, there aren’t nearly the resources to successfully help anyone.
My barber told me that drug abuse, bad drug abuse, was rampant in SC.
He reminisced about the days of his youth, running around the town without the need for self defense.
“Santa Cruz has always been weird, but it used to be the good weird.” I knew exactly what he meant by that.
As we chatted, the man in the chair next to us chimed in. “I’ve noticed its very hard for people to afford housing on the coast. What’s the deal with that?”
An answer that both my barber and I knew the answer to intuitively as both Californians.
The man admitted to being from Minnesota, he understood the drug issue but didn’t really understand the housing situation.
Between the University, the wealthy people, the natives, and the refugees from fire disasters, Santa Cruz does not have nearly enough space for everyone. Supply and demand dictates that prices should rise. Which they definitely have. But that’s assuming you can even find a place to live at all.
This really is the case all over California. The demand to live here is so high that the price for housing greatly exceeds what you could make working minimum wage full time.
I admitted that I was living on the governments dollar, which is true. The only way I can live in California, and in Santa Cruz more specifically is with government support. Support that they expect to have paid back.
The school is huge, and admits way more students than it, or the town can support.
I transferred to SC in 2021 and was only barely able to find a home. One of my current roommates, was forced to live in a hotel before he moved in with us. Many live in their cars to attend university.
My barber wished that more resources could be put toward supporting the students instead of worrying about other states homeless. I tend to agree.
But the other faction in control of SC in direct competition to all this are the tech elites from San Jose. They buy all the property. After all, its great beach property.
They also price out all the local business. Most of Santa Cruz is made up of small shops. These used to be owned by independent individuals, but an increasing number are funded by tech giants who moved over the hill.
They don’t need their businesses to run at a profit. Which again eats up supply of space and drives up cost. What we are seeing now are tons of empty building blocks full of businesses that were not successful enough to keep up with rent increases.
With the increasing demand the rent is unlikely to go down to fill the empty spaces. They just have to wait for someone to come around who is willing to pay what they want. It’s only a matter of time.
As much as I wanted to shift the conversation in a more positive direction, I couldn’t deny how dramatic this would be for someone who grew up in SC.
We also came to a similar conclusion about the fate of SC, and California for that matter.
With the upcoming rise of corporate America, and the increase in remote work. Best case scenario is that people take high paying jobs and move away from dense expensive areas in order to enjoy the lower cost of living in other states.
“They’d be living large”
Either way it requires a fuller embrace of corporate standards, and ways of living. Homelessness will be dealt with, but so too will the strangeness and individuality of places like SC.
None of this is new information. This is happening all over California. It’s just interesting to be in a place witnessing it happening. Also knowing that it will continue to get worse before it gets better. But it will never be the same. (When is anything really)
The town is building higher density housing, the homeless continue to get moved around to wherever is most convenient. The houses rise in price, the future for Santa Cruz is similar to that of Santa Barbara, Venice, or Malibu.
Though it reminds me of the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment. What attracted people to Santa Cruz was the people. If all the people get swapped out is it still Santa Cruz? That’s for you to decide.
Thanks for reading. I hope you all have a wonderful day. If you liked this consider subscribing for more things I write. If you really liked it consider throwing me a couple dollars so I can get off government support for housing.