Longest Night Memorial Remembers 69 Homeless Deaths in Santa Barbara County

Under the gathering sky of the longest night of the year, about 75 people gathered beneath the archway of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse to call out the names of 69 homeless people who died in Santa Barbara in the past year.

One of the names called out was that of Timothy John Largent, a 31-year-old from Bakersfield who apparently succumbed to an overdose of fentanyl. Longtime homeless and mental health advocate Wayne Martin Mellinger dedicated his poem “I Saw the Best Souls of My City” — a clear riff on Allen Ginsberg’s beat classic “Howl” — to Largent’s death. According to Mellinger, Largent “just wanted one night when his skull wasn’t screaming … one night of rest without terror scratching the inside of his skull.” Instead, said Mellinger, Largent found death at the bottom of Mission Creek, where his heart stopped beating.

This year’s incantation of the names marks the 13th time such a ceremony — about as ecumenical and multidenominational as any held within city limits — has been held. “Thirteen years is long enough,” Mellinger stated before launching into a partial recitation of his 18-minute poem. People should not be criminalized for merely existing, he said.

Cantor Mark Childs said when he went home later that night, he would light the eighth and last candle of his Hanukkah lamp, marking the eighth night of Hanukkah. “This is what we do this time of year,” Child said. “We show light.”

Also blessing the event was a Tibetan Buddhist, a Muslim Imam, and a couple of Christian ministers. There was much talk of love, dignity, compassion, redemption, dignity, and more love. 

Father Bob Fox urged those in attendance to donate to organizations helping the homeless, to educate themselves on what’s happening at the City Council and Board of Supervisors and agitate accordingly. But mostly, he said, people should just reach out to people on the streets. 

“It’s so easy to show someone you care,” he said. “You can just say, ‘Hi. How are you doing?’ Or better yet, “‘Hi, I’m Bob.’”

The number 69 is derived from the best recollections of those in the trenches of homeless services and people they work with; it is not an official statistic. During the ceremony, for example, about four additional names were shouted out. For years, the County of Santa Barbara tracked homeless deaths, but in recent years, that function has reportedly been discontinued, so reliably documented numbers are not available. Mellinger said he has been told that service will be reinstated. 

Either way, such determinations are not always easy. People who’ve been a homeless a long time sometimes die shortly upon securing housing. It is apparently an epidemiological phenomenon. But tracking down such numbers is challenging.

Sunday’s ceremony comes at a time when the rules surrounding federal funding for homeless services — about $5 million a year to Santa Barbara County and its care providers — is very much up in the air. Grant deadlines get changed at the last minute. But one thing’s for certain; the status quo is dead, and there will be far less funding available for people needing permanent housing. 

In downtown Santa Barbara, the PATH homeless shelter on Cacique Street — a perennial disappointment to operators, guests, and neighbors alike — has just been purchased by the City of Santa Barbara and an interim new care provider has been selected. That purchase, however, is just the beginning of a far more expansive — if still ill-defined — plan to create a more integrated homeless housing and treatment hub in its stead. Things are moving.

City Hall’s efforts to find a new operator for the homeless day center located on lower Chapala Street appear to have been stymied by lack of interest by anyone other than the existing operator, S.B. ACT. It also appears that the differences that center’s management had with its immediate neighbors have been resolved. Visitors are now welcome by referral only; this has reduced the number of visitors by more than half, now down to about 35. In addition, the center’s warm meal program was abandoned and replaced with brown bag lunches, and the needle exchange program was eliminated altogether. 

In the meantime, the Father Virgil Cordano Day Center — located near Hollister Avenue and Highway 154 — is handling about 100 people a day. The current center, located near a gun shop, a liquor store, a smoke shop, and a massage parlor, is not big enough to meet the demand, and the center’s operator, St. Vincent’s, is embarking upon a $10 million fundraising campaign to build a new day center plus 66 units of new housing on a nearby property.