There is a “dash movement taking place in Santa Cruz, California. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel article, “’Dash’ deployed for solving Santa Cruz Country Homelessness”,  the multi-agency cooperative 180/180 Initiative has a goal of offering “180 people a 180 degree life change” by a deadline of July 1st. A secondary goal was also created to place 25 of the city’s most visible homeless people, along with a group of 12 from Watsonville, on a course towards permanent supportive housing within 100 days by May 7^th.  The 100-day dash plan is a specialized tool that gives partnering agencies and officials who wouldn’t usually get involved a finite timeline and achievable goal.

Although this project sounds promising, with 8 people currently being helped and two already housed in Watsonville, there seems to be the same lingering goal to get the chronically homeless away from the downtown commercial areas where they reside. Homeless Services Center Executive Director Monica Martinez is even quoted in the article saying “Everybody has their reason why (they want to get the homeless off the streets), but we all agree we want it to happen.” This reminds me of Wasserman and Clair’s book  At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness, and how their participants discussed how the programs shouldn’t be pushed upon them and that they should be choices. My interpretation of this article seems as if this plan isn’t entirely for the homeless’ best interest, but to remove them from living in commercial areas where their presence isn’t wanted, which was an issue also raised in the book. These chronically homeless people they are “helping” are not being seen as people, but as a blemish on the downtowns of Santa Cruz and Watsonville. As much as this would like help out the homeless community, I fear that it is not enough to solve the chronic problem.