8 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY september 19-25, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com news Finding and keeping a home can be challenging for families in Monterey County. According to the Monterey County Office of Education, almost 13,000 students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade are experiencing homelessness or housing instability. For the past couple years, MCOE has successfully run a program to aid families facing homelessness with funds from United Way, providing funds to families to pay rental deposits. The program is sunsetting, but a similar program is on the way, thanks to a $50,000 donation from the Housing for Kids Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County. Housing for Kids has been a partner to Monterey Peninsula Unified School District on initiatives to end homelessness, and is now expanding its scope. “We plan to have this be an ongoing program,” says Sandra Leader, a founding member of the Housing for Kids Fund. The funds will cover the pay for a part-time worker to run the program at MCOE and will provide qualifying families with money for a deposit, or those behind on payments for one month’s rent to help keep them housed. The program could start as early as November and is funded for the current 2024-25 school year. MCOE works with homeless liaisons in 24 school districts and eight charter schools across the county. The county office receives referrals from them of families in need. “We’re like their safety net,” says Donna Smith, MCOE’s program coordinator for Homeless Children and Youth Services Program. “This provides another way of supporting those students so they can focus on school.” Raising the Roof Nonprofit partners with County Office of Ed to fund a position supporting homeless students. By Celia Jiménez After being briefly laid off in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, Beth Rocha, a Seaside city planner, put her fingers in the dirt. As the staff liaison to the city’s Environmental Commission, she had applied for a pollinator grant in 2019, and scores of plants were arrayed on the City Hall lawn to mature until they were put in the ground. So with some help, Rocha started doing just that, transforming a sandy corner of Seaside’s Capra Park—one of the city’s many pocket parks—into a flourishing community garden in just one year. The vegetables she and others planted there were free for the community to take, so long as they were ripe, and Rocha says the sunflowers would sometimes cause those driving by to pull over and snap a picture. Not having a place to garden at home, the park became Rocha’s therapeutic happy place, a place where she’s spent countless hours. Yet that garden, in a matter of minutes, was torn asunder by a vandal around 10:30am on Wednesday, Aug. 28. In a video the Weekly reviewed from a neighbor’s security camera, it was also clear that a Seaside Public Works employee was present, and even fist-bumped the vandal before and after the incident. On Sept. 12, Seaside Police announced charges against Tim Dunn Sr., 60, of misdemeanor vandalism. (Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges says that except in rare cases, a suspect in a misdemeanor case can only be arrested on the day of the incident.) Rocha says she’s interacted with Dunn Sr. a number of times in the park, adding that he goes by the nickname “Razor” and coaches youth basketball. “He’s somebody I’d probably see once a week every week the past few years,” Rocha says. “He’s someone who’d share food with me, and I’d share food with him from the garden. He was cool with not taking [a vegetable] until it’s good to go.” While Seaside PD’s Sept. 12 announcement stated Dunn’s motive remained unknown, Borges spoke with him over the phone the next day and says that Dunn was remorseful, and that he said he was going through some tough times in his personal life, and was upset to observe the Seaside employee removing grills from the park, which had been left there in violation of city code. “He was upset, and he lost it,” Borges says. “That’s his own words.” (Dunn could not be reached by the Weekly before deadline.) Officer Gabe Suarez, who investigated the case, says the department wasn’t informed of the crime until the following week. That would mean the Public Works employee who was present didn’t report it to police, at least not for some days. As for what discipline that employee may or not face, no one in the city will say, as personnel matters are confidential. Had the damage to the garden exceeded $1,000, Dunn Sr. could have been charged with a felony. Suarez says the estimate of the monetary damages he used in his investigation—several hundred dollars but less than $1,000—was given to him by the Public Works Department. Rocha is bummed there won’t be a full spaghetti squash harvest this year, and that Dunn cut down 20 sunflower plants before they could bloom. But as for the rest of the garden, which she and other volunteers helped repair and replant in the wake of the vandalism, Rocha says, “Overall, it’s still good.” Beth Rocha looks at the remnants of destroyed plants at Capra Park. Nonprofit Friends of Seaside Parks gathers volunteers to help maintain this and other parks. Done Dirty A misdemeanor vandalism charge is filed over the destruction of a community garden in Seaside. By David Schmalz Marty Fleetwood, Sandra Leader and Diane Driessen (left to right) helped organize an estate sale that raised $21,900 for the Housing for Kids Fund, which launched in 2022. “I’d share food with him from the garden.” Daniel Dreifuss Daniel Dreifuss
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