For months, Penny Huntsinger has been inviting the homeless to stay in her house at 126 Chrystal Terrace in exchange for doing small chores. She is trying to help, she explains, because the city’s shelters are all full, and these people have nowhere else to go. Her neighbors have opinions about all this.
For months, Penny Huntsinger has been inviting the homeless to stay in her house at 126 Chrystal Terrace in exchange for doing small chores. She is trying to help, she explains, because the city’s shelters are all full, and these people have nowhere else to go. Her neighbors have opinions about all this.
They’re not challenging her charity, but rather the consequences it is having on their quiet street. Police have been called to the house at least 100 times in the past six months. There have been countless fights and problems with both drugs and guns. In one particularly egregious incident, a neighbor complained that one of the homeless people offered drugs to an 8-year-old who lives on the street.
Since Huntsinger, who only lives there part time, refused to help, her neighbors formed their own Neighborhood Association and petitioned the courts to intervene. Santa Cruz County Superior Judge Timothy Volkmann sided with them and declared the house a public nuisance. He is expected to rule over the next few weeks whether the home should be vacated. After that, it remains to be seen whether the damage done to the once-quiet street is reversible. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
