Lookout Santa Cruz

Pajaro Valley Unified school board candidate Curt Wilcox was arrested Sept. 18 and faces felony charges related to his candidacy filing, including allegations involving his residency and voter registration.

On October 30, neighbors will gather under the redwoods to preserve the food assistance, counseling, crisis response and disaster recovery services that help ensure San Lorenzo Valley families have somewhere to turn when they need it most.

“Community Bridges helped me hold my family, this house, and my own wellbeing together.”

For Merritt Grooms, that support came at a moment when one crisis was quickly becoming many.

After a January 2023 disaster caused major damage to her San Lorenzo River home, Merritt faced nearly $30,000 in repairs after her insurance claim was denied.

That’s when Mountain Community Resources stepped in. 

With help from our dedicated MCR Advocate Suzie, Merritt secured grant funding to make the repairs possible. The center also loaned her industrial dehumidifiers to address water and mold damage while the work was being arranged.

But repairing the house was only part of what her family needed.

Merritt was raising two teenagers as a single mother, working full-time and caring for her own mother. As those responsibilities mounted, Mountain Community Resources connected her with a therapist so she would not have to carry everything alone.

More recently, the center has helped her search for affordable housing that would allow her children to finish high school in the community they call home.

Merritt’s experience illustrates something Mountain Community Resources sees everyday:  how a difficult moment rarely arrives by itself. 

Merrit Grooms and her child received the assistance they needed from Mountain Community Resources dedicated team.

Damage to a home can quickly become a financial crisis. Financial pressure can affect a parent’s emotional well-being. Housing instability can disrupt a child’s education and separate a family from the people and places that anchor their lives.

That’s exactly why having a trusted place to turn matters.

Support That Changes with the Moment

For 43 years, Mountain Community Resources has helped San Lorenzo Valley residents navigate challenges that rarely fit neatly into a single category.

A family may first walk through the doors for food and discover help applying for public benefits. A parent looking for housing assistance may also find counseling, parenting support, or a legal consultation. When disaster strikes, residents can turn to local professionals who already know their community and are prepared to help them take the next step.

That flexibility is at the heart of the center’s work. Mountain Community Resources staff listen first, build trust and help people navigate what comes next, because lasting stability.

The Mountain Affair provides an opportunity for the San Lorenzo Valley community to reconnect and hear about successes and growing need.

Mountain Community Resources roots stretch back to the community response following the devastating 1982 mudslides. Since then, the center has continued to work alongside residents, local organizations and emergency responders, to help the Valley prepare for and recover from fires, storms and other disasters.

Today, Mountain Community Resources directly serves 744 community members whose households include 1,809 people, including 376 children and teenagers.

Last year alone, the center provided:

• 5,170 bags of food 
• 575 crisis-support visits 
• 427 hours of counseling 

Behind every number is a neighbor experiencing something deeply personal: groceries brought home to a family, a parent finding support through a safe conversation during a crisis, or a person hearing the reassurance they need the most, “You don’t have to figure this out alone.” 

One Evening with an Impact All Year

On Friday, October 30, that spirit of neighbors helping neighbors will fill Highlands Park & Senior Community Center in Ben Lomond for the 41st Annual Mountain Affair, Mountain Community Resources’ signature fundraiser and a celebration of the people that make the San Lorenzo Valley special.

“Mountain Community Resources has been part of the San Lorenzo Valley for more than four decades because this community has always understood the importance of neighbors taking care of neighbors,” said Community Bridges CEO Raymon Cancino. “MCR is a trusted place to turn. Mountain Affair gives people a chance to celebrate this community while making sure that support will be here when a neighbor needs it.”

 Guests will gather for food prepared by Chef Marina Camarlinghi and grill master Victor Cuevas-Sanchez of Barbara & Company Catering, wines from Alfaro Family Wines, live music, and a silent auction showcasing the generosity of local businesses and community partners. 

Every ticket, sponsorship, and Fund-a-Need investment helps keep food assistance, counseling, parenting education, housing navigation, public-benefits enrollment, emergency preparedness, disaster recovery, and crisis support available throughout the year.

More Than a Night Out

A ticket to Mountain Affair is more than admission to an event.

It can help put food on a neighbor’s table. It can connect a parent with counseling before stress becomes a crisis. It can help a family understand its options after a disaster. And it can keep trusted advocates available when a resident feels unsure where to turn.

Every week, Mountain Community Resources welcomes hundreds of community members for various services such as our weekly food distribution.

Merritt’s story illustrates the difference that kind of support can make. Mountain Community Resources could not undo the damage to Merritt’s home or erase the pressures facing her family. But its staff could deeply listen, help her identify resources, and remain beside her as her needs changed.

That is what community care looks like: not a single intervention, but a relationship that helps someone keep moving forward.

When San Lorenzo Valley residents fill the room at Mountain Affair, they make that relationship possible for the next neighbor who needs it.

Join the 41st Annual Mountain Affair

Friday, October 30, 2026

6:30–9:30 p.m.

Highlands Park Senior & Community Center

8500 Highway 9, Ben Lomond

Individual tickets are $120, and sponsorship opportunities are available.

Purchase tickets, explore sponsorship opportunities or make a donation at communitybridges.org/mountainaffair.

For more information, contact donations@cbridges.org or 831-688-8840 ext. 205.

Come raise a glass, share a meal and help keep trusted support close to home.

The post A place to turn: The 41st Annual Mountain Affair keeps support close to home appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Businesses operating in Santa Cruz County must register with the county clerk. Lookout Santa Cruz reviews the public filings from local businesses to report on new businesses starting in the area.

Here is what’s new in local business recently.

New businesses

• GROUND TRUTH TECH was registered at 19100 Big Basin Way, Boulder Creek, by Stacy C. Hagge-Bennett as an individual business on Sept. 14.
• MODERN BY NATURE was registered at 1609 Escalona Dr., Santa Cruz, by Nicole Van Vleck as an individual business on Sept. 14.
• NORMAS HOUSECLEANING was registered at 95 Pennsylvania Dr., #43, Watsonville, by Normas Housecleaning LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 15.
• THE ADU ATTORNEY was registered at 413 Lake Ave., Suite 104, Santa Cruz, by Jessica Sommer Grigsby as an individual business on Sept. 16.
• CAS CONSTRUCTION was registered at 471 Jolon Dr., Watsonville, by Luis Castaneda as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• COLOR MY WORLD STYLING was registered at 312 Brewington Ave., Watsonville, by Ines Cecilia Odegaard as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• SANTA CRUZ OCC MED was registered at 616 Frederick St., Santa Cruz, by Danette L. Sutton as an individual business on Sept. 17.
• WINTERVINE GARDEN & GROUNDS was registered at 1031 Cayuga St., Apt. B, Santa Cruz, by Wintervine Garden & Grounds LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 17.
• Aaliyah’s Catering was registered at 24 Ford St., Apt. G, Watsonville, by Laura Terriquez Gonzalez as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• AR HAULING JUNK REMOVAL was registered at 180 Marigold Ave., Freedom, by Ramiro Sosa Avalos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SURVIVORS CYCLE SALVAGE was registered at 1345 Brommer St., Santa Cruz, by Isaac Santos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SANTA CRUZ CYCLE SALVAGE was registered at 1345 Brommer St., Santa Cruz, by Isaac Santos as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• H&A BOOKKEEPING SERVICES was registered at 61 Conference Dr., Felton, by Alexander R. Faulk as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• JOHNNY MARTINI PRIVATE CHEF was registered at 220 Miller Ct., Santa Cruz, by John Paul Martinez Jr. as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• WHOLEHEARTED EARLY LEARNING SOLUTIONS was registered at 1020 West Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, by Diana Stephens as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• TIDE AND TIMBER HANDYMAN SERVICES was registered at 1020 West Cliff Dr., Santa Cruz, by David C. Stephens as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• JAY HOWE MASONRY was registered at 144 Bradley Dr., Santa Cruz, by Linda Howe as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• COOPER & COOPER ASSOC. was registered at 19 Mountain View Rd., Corralitos, by Fred Lewis Cooper as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• SABORCITO APARICIO was registered at 1975 Chanticleer Ave., Santa Cruz, by Kay Guadalupe Aparicio Hernandez as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• LUNA SHEET METAL was registered at 612 Calle Cuesta, Watsonville, by Luis Gonzalez-Carrillo as an individual business on Sept. 18.
• L & L MAINTENANCE was registered at 1343 Orchard Dr., Santa Cruz, by Craig Bray Lawrie as an individual business on Sept. 21.
• SUPERCOMMUNICATORS was registered at 142 Phelan Court, Santa Cruz, by Duhiggalter Corp as a corporation on Sept. 21.
• PACIFIC SKIN CARE was registered at 2628 Soquel Dr., Santa Cruz, by Elijah Kai Crowell as a business operated by a married couple on Sept. 21.
• PIVOT CRISIS INTERVENTION was registered at 1824 Soquel Ave., Suite A, Santa Cruz, by Intelvio, LLC, as a limited liability company on Sept. 21.
• TNT REGISTRATION SERVICES was registered at 2636 S. Rodeo Gulch Rd., Unit C, Soquel, by Richard B. Oliveira as an individual business on Sept. 22.
• AUTO SPA was registered at 720 Capitola Ave., #c, Capitola, by Juan Manuel Monjaraz as an individual business on Sept. 22.
• SANTA CRUZ SALSA BACHATA KIZOMBA, SANTA CRUZ SBK, SC SBK was registered at 2431 Richmond Dr., Apt. 4, Santa Cruz, by Miaheyyun Morningflower as a business operated by a married couple on Sept. 23.
• FREQLIFE BAITS was registered at 530 Cathedral Dr., Aptos, by Brendan Smith as an individual business on Sept. 23.
• NIGHTOWL MAINTENANCE was registered at 320 East Lake Ave., Watsonville, by Miguel Alejandro Cerda as an individual business on Sept. 24.
• CALIBRATE CONSULTING, REENTER FLOW FITNESS was registered at 337 7th Ave., Santa Cruz, by Julia Katrin Ryan as an individual business on Sept. 24.
• CENTRAL COAST CIRQUE FEST was registered at 1855 41st Ave., Suite G9, Capitola, by 6lackeys, LLC, as a limited liability company on Sept. 24.
• CENTRAL COAST AERIAL FEST was registered at 1855 41st Avenue, Suite G9, Capitola, by 6lackeys, LLC, as a limited liability company on Sept. 24.
• THE WASH & DRY PLACE was registered at 222 Mount Hermon Rd., #b, Scotts Valley, by Sweet Rockie Properties LLC as a limited liability company on Sept. 25.
• BLUE SKY BUILDING SERVICES was registered at 601 Tuttle Ave., #6, Watsonville, by Martin Dennis Carroll as an individual business on Sept. 25.

Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.

MORE LOCAL COVERAGE

The post Santa Cruz County business filings: Week of Sept. 29 appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

By Scott Hernandez-Jason

New state funding is helping to further advance a partnership between UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis to train physicians to serve the Central Coast. 

The two campuses last year announced the new UC Programs in Medical Education Central Coast (PRIME Central Coast). Applications to the program opened in May, with the inaugural cohort of students set to begin their studies in July 2027.

The 2026-27 California budget includes $3.3 million to support PRIME Central Coast in hiring employees who will further build the program and in delivering professional development opportunities for Central Coast physicians who will be part of the program.  

“UC Santa Cruz is committed to improving the health of our region and we deeply appreciate the support of the legislature and governor,” Chancellor Cynthia Larive said. “Sen. John Laird’s advocacy and support is helping to change the trajectory of health care in our region. PRIME Central Coast will train talented students from our own communities and prepare them to serve those communities as physicians.”

The University of California’s Programs in Medical Education (UC PRIME) is a successful and unique medical school program that supplements standard training with an additional curriculum tailored to meet the needs of California’s communities that lack sufficient access to health care. PRIME graduates go on to work in these medically underserved regions, expanding health care services with an increased understanding of the regional needs.

“UC Santa Cruz has a long-term goal of establishing a medical school, which would be a great boost to the Monterey Bay Area’s medical system,” said State Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz). “Last year, I worked to get money in the state budget for the first students—now being recruited—who will return to the Central Coast for their clinical coursework and residency. 

“I am pleased that the budget we just approved provides an additional $3.3 million for the next round of students. This will be a long process over the coming years, and I look forward to continuing to be a partner in this effort.”

Students interested in PRIME Central Coast should apply to UC Davis School of Medicine through the American Medical College application Services (AMCAS). If invited to complete a secondary application, they may indicate interest in PRIME Central Coast at that time. Students must first be admitted to UC Davis School of Medicine before being considered for a second interview for PRIME Central Coast. 

“The UC Davis School of Medicine is eager to train students from the Central Coast who are committed to returning to their communities to address physician workforce shortages and improve the health of the people they serve,” said Melody Tran-Reina, MD, executive director, Community Health Scholars Programs at UC Davis.

As with other students, their first half of medical school will focus on curriculum and their second half on patient care experience. Unlike traditional students, PRIME students will frequently return to the Central Coast for their clinical rotations under the supervision of physicians at area hospitals and clinics. Studies show that more than half of physicians practice within a 100-mile radius of where they trained in residency, highlighting the need to expand clinical training opportunities in areas of need. PRIME Central Coast aims to cultivate a physician workforce that is from the Central Coast, trained in the Central Coast, and stays in the Central Coast, addressing health disparities in the region. 

UC PRIME is helping to address a growing health care crisis in California. By 2030, the state will have 11.5 percent fewer physicians than needed, with the Central Coast and Central Valley regions facing an even more severe 18.7 percent shortfall in primary care doctors—one of the worst gaps in the state. Currently, 60 percent of Californians who pursue medical education must leave the state for their training. PRIME Central Coast will help retain more of the state’s talent by developing medical training opportunities in communities where doctors are most needed. 

With a multi-prong strategy for educating and training health professionals, UC Santa Cruz is building a pipeline of talented and compassionate physicians and medical leaders who are committed to serving California’s Central Coast communities.

The post State funding supports UC Davis/UC Santa Cruz program to train future Central Coast physicians appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for its newsletters.

The largest planned deportation program in U.S. history swept up more than 38,000 people in California since February 2025. The federal government purchased detention facilities, in part to avoid scrutiny from local governments. Protests erupted against the detentions and the facilities, and police dispersed those protests with the help of stun grenades. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed a package of immigration bills that Democrats aim to disrupt the deportation program in California, limit the tactics of immigration enforcement agencies and open up federal agents to civil liability. The most significant bills will likely be tested in federal court.

They range from prohibiting immigration agents from using electric shock gloves to creating a bill of rights for people held in detention and extending the state’s power to investigate conditions inside detention centers.

The new laws come in the midst of an escalation in Trump’s deportation plan with weekly immigration arrests hitting new records across the state.

“This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities,” Newsom said in a written statement. “We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.” 

The most sweeping change would allow anyone to sue federal agents for violations of their constitutional rights. Under federal law, the only legal relief available now to people who sue agents of the U.S. government is a “Bivens” action, named after the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case in which a man successfully sued drug enforcement agents who violated his Fourth Amendment right against illegal search and seizure. 

Supporters of the bill, which they call the No Kings Act, say it “closes that accountability gap [by] providing for a clear statutory pathway to sue any official — federal, state, or local — who violates the Constitution.”

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) “and Border Patrol have terrorized California communities with impunity. That ends today,” Sen. Scott Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who wrote the law, said in a written statement after Newsom signed it.

The bill’s opponents, which include dozens of California law enforcement agencies, argue that the law isn’t necessary, and that it will “promote second-guessing of a public employee’s actions made in good faith.”

The actions of immigration enforcement agents — including whether they are acting within their duties when detain or kill someone, and whether they are following the laws of the state in which they’re operating — are at the center of court battles between California and the Trump administration. 

The January fatal shootings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were protesting the Trump administration’s deportation program in Minneapolis underscored the stakes for California Democrats who demanded more accountability of federal agents. Dozens of people have been injured in protests, or when the agents misidentify a person as a deportation target. 

When an unarmed person in California is shot and killed by a police officer, the state attorney general can investigate the shooting under a 2020 program. Newsom signed a law that duplicates that legislation, but applies it to immigration agents who kill unarmed people.    

The state program would face an immediate legal problem stemming from an 1890 U.S. Supreme Court case which forbids states from prosecuting federal law enforcement officers acting in the course of their duties. That case played a critical role earlier this year when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a California law Newsom signed last year that tried to compel masked federal agents to identify themselves.

Other new California laws focus on conditions in immigrant detention centers.  Detainees have complained of filthy drinking water, among other issues — most of them confirmed by investigations by counties and civil liberties groups. The private detention facilities provide water for sale in their canteens, but the prices were significantly marked up. 

A bill would set a 35% maximum markup for all canteen items. It faced no opposition in the Legislature

Another new law extends California’s authority to investigate private detention centers, a power it uses for annual reviews of medical care inside the facilities.  

Here are some of the immigration-related bills Newsom signed into law:

• Civil lawsuits against federal agents: Senate Bill 747, the so-called No Kings Act, allows civil lawsuits against officers over alleged civil rights violations.
• Banning electric shock gloves: Assembly Bill 2760 prohibits federal agents from using electric shock gloves. Lawmakers advanced the bill quickly in response to reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought thousands of the weapons.
• Civil rights for detainees: SB 942 declares a bill of rights of people held in immigrant detention centers, including access to healthcare and healthy food.
• State investigations: SB 1399 extends a law that empowers state agencies to investigate conditions in immigrant detention centers.
• 911 calls: SB 423 requires government agencies to release details of emergency calls coming from immigrant detention centers. The bill was prompted by CalMatters’ reporting on alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa Detention Center.
• Access to state property: AB 1807 prohibits immigration agents from using state-owned property.
• Shooting investigations: AB 1806 requires state prosecutors to investigate shootings by federal immigration agents.
• Crowd control: SB 937 forbids law enforcement agencies from using flash-bang grenades to break up protests.

CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry contributed to this story.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post Newsom signs new laws to rein in immigration agents as Trump’s deportation campaign escalates appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Here’s what’s happening on Santa Cruz County roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 6 a.m. on September 29

• There are alternating lane closures on Highway 9 at Pool Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. This is expected to continue until April 30, 2027.
   
• The on-ramp to southbound Highway 1 from Park Avenue in Capitola is facing closures for paving work. The closure is scheduled to last until Nov. 19.
   
• A lane is closed on Highway 152 at Main St./Lake St. in Watsonville because of curb, gutter and sidewalk work. The closure is scheduled last until 2:59 p.m. tomorrow.
   
• A lane on Highway 9 at El Solyo Heights Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley is closed for utility work. The closure is expected to end at 11:59 p.m. today.
   
• One lane is closed on south Highway 9 at Encinal Street in the Harvey West area of Santa Cruz because of electrical work. The closure is expected to end at 3:01 p.m. today. 

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Tuesday morning traffic: Highway 9, Highway 1 and Highway 152 lane closures today appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

A new report from the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust finds that the number of commercial fishing vessels based in Monterey Bay has fallen more than 70% since the 1980s, while changing environmental conditions have reshaped what and how fishers catch.

Retired administrator Alicia Jimenez and Watsonville craftsman Curt Wilcox are competing for the open Trustee Area V seat on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board. A third candidate, Jennifer Schacher, remains on the ballot despite saying she will not actively campaign.

Santa Cruz journalist and UCSC lecturer Martha Mendoza spent the past year investigating the global online scam industry for a new PBS "Frontline" documentary. Then scammers hit close to home, targeting people close to her in Santa Cruz.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for its newsletter here.

On a clean summer swell, the wave at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach arrives from the south, wraps around a cobblestone point and unspools toward the pier in a long, shimmering wave that can carry a surfer for hundreds of feet. It breaks slowly, forgivingly, over rounded stones that were delivered by Malibu Creek across millennia.

The beach plays an outsized role in American and surf culture, inspiring the films “Gidget” and “The Endless Summer” and the songs of the Beach Boys. The point produced the longboarding style that still bears the place’s name: In Australia, longboards are called “Malibus.” 

Kassia Meador has been reading this wave for nearly 30 years. She was 15 the summer she first paddled out at Surfrider Beach, and she has spent the decades since becoming one of the most recognizable longboarders in the world. She calls it, without hesitation, the best wave on the planet.

Lately, when Meador paddles out, something is missing beneath her: the beach. The sand at Surfrider Beach has thinned to the point where, at high tide, the ocean reaches almost to the Pacific Coast Highway. The wave itself has changed shape; the three distinct points that made Malibu’s Surfrider Beach have collapsed into one, she said. “It bunches everybody together,” she said. There’s more crowding and more tension in the water, and less of the wave that made the place worth protecting.

What’s happening at Malibu is about human intervention—a century of dams, seawalls and paved-over rivers that have starved this coastline of the sediment that builds its beaches. But it is becoming a climate story, fast, because a coast stripped of its natural defenses is a coast with nothing left to absorb what’s coming. And what’s coming this winter is a lot.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has an El Niño advisory in effect and puts the odds of a very strong event this fall and winter at greater than 90% — it recently broke the highest surface temperature recorded for this phenomenon, months before the projected peak. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency last Monday in anticipation of heavy rainfall, high waves and flooding the phenomenon could bring. 

Malibu’s First Point is one of 57 surf breaks a team of scientists, working with the conservation group Save the Waves, assessed in a study published this year in the journal Climatic Change. Their finding was blunt: Globally significant surf breaks are vulnerable to climate change, with 89% at medium or high risk from the loss of shoreline resilience and 79% from sea-level rise. Malibu made the list. But Malibu is only a single, visible instance of a reckoning unfolding along the entire California coast, where the sand that builds beaches has been cut off at nearly every source: trapped behind dams in the rivers that used to deliver it and sealed behind seawalls in the bluffs that used to shed it.

Holding back the sand

A beach is less a fixed place than a slow river of sand, fed by creeks and eroding bluffs and carried along the shore by waves. At Malibu, that sand and the cobble beneath it also shape the wave itself. Less sand means a thinner beach and a wave with less to stand on. To understand why the supply has dried up, you have to look inland, to a hundred-year-old dam few Californians have heard of.

Rindge Dam was built across Malibu Creek in 1926 and filled completely with sediment within about three decades — sediment that once washed down the watershed every winter and rebuilt the beach every summer. It cut the creek’s sand delivery to the coast from roughly 41,000 cubic meters a year to about 14,000.

About 780,000 cubic yards of sediment sit behind the dam today, roughly half of it sand suitable for beaches, according to California State Parks.

It is a small piece of a statewide pattern. California’s major coastal dams have trapped an estimated 152 million cubic meters of sand that would otherwise feed the state’s beaches since 1885, according to research by Gary Griggs, a coastal geologist at UC Santa Cruz who has spent five decades documenting the state’s disappearing shoreline. In Southern California, he’s found, the natural sand supply has been cut roughly in half.

Elle Overs, a marine biology Ph.D. student and a longtime Malibu surfer, sees the same mechanism everywhere she looks. “It’s a current problem that stems from a hundred years of sediment being stored up behind the Rindge Dam,” she said, and behind the concrete channels that entomb the Los Angeles and Santa Ana Rivers. “Naturally, those rivers should be bringing dirt and sand to their respective beaches.” 

Further complicating the situation in Malibu is California State Parks’ 2013 restoration of the Malibu Lagoon that reconfigured the channels behind the beach to improve water quality. By most accounts, the project succeeded in doing so, but many local surfers, Meador among them, blame the project for wrecking the wave. She argues the lagoon’s mouth was never properly reset afterward, so for more than a decade it has opened toward First Point rather than at the western end of the beach, near Third Point, cutting into the sand. 

California State Parks has no plan to manage the lagoon’s mouth. Its statewide policy is to let lagoons open and close naturally, said Richard Van Sant, the Rindge Dam project manager, because breaching them artificially can flush lagoon species into the ocean and kill them. Van Sant, who joined State Parks after the restoration, said he could not speak to the project itself.

Not everyone in the water agrees. Tom Ford, CEO of The Bay Foundation, which was involved in the restoration, said the wave was already changing before 2013. “Those changes started long before that restoration project,” he said, declining to assign it a single cause, noting that he isn’t a coastal modeler. Overs goes further, pushing back on her own community. “Everyone’s very quick to blame the lagoon and State Parks,” she said. “State Parks is doing the best they can.” The real problem, in her view, is upstream and statewide.

A people problem

Beaches erode; it’s what they do. The problems come from the ways humans have built around them, and what happens when there’s nowhere left for beaches to retreat.

Or, as Zach Plopper of the Surfrider Foundation puts it, “erosion is a people problem. It’s not a nature problem.” 

Charles Lester spent 20 years at the California Coastal Commission, the last five as its executive director, and now directs the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at UC Santa Barbara. Most of California’s shoreline has been receding for thousands of years, he said, and beaches are simply the buffer that migrates landward as it goes. 

“If you build a seawall, you stop the movement at the back of the beach, and so the ocean’s continuing to rise, but the back of the beach is not moving, and eventually the beach is squeezed out.” Geologists call it passive erosion. “If we want beaches,” Lester said, “we don’t want seawalls generally on our beaches.”

And yet the seawalls keep going up, because as beaches thin and storms — powered by climate change — reach farther, a wall is the quickest way to protect homes and roads already sitting at the water’s edge. Roughly 14% of California’s coast was armored as of 2018, up from 2.5% in 1971, and nearly 38% across the four most developed southern counties. 

Lester’s explanation is less about science losing than about law and inheritance. California’s Coastal Act drew a line: Development that already existed when the law took effect can be granted a seawall if it’s in danger, while anything built afterward must be sited so it never needs one.

In Southern California, where the shoreline was largely built out before the law arrived, the grandfathered category is enormous. “It’s been hard to say no in those cases,” Lester said, “because of the way the law was written.”

Now add a record El Niño. El Niño years can raise sea level along the California coast independent of long-term climate change — 6 to 12 inches, Lester notes, from the added heat and energy in the system — and bring bigger storms on top of it. 

“I really think,” Plopper said, “the 2026-2027 winter is going to be the year of reckoning for the Southern California coastline.”

Lester has watched this cycle for five decades, and he’ll tell you how it ends. “It’s a pretty good bet that this time next year we’ll be looking back at a lot of emergency permits that were approved for new rock and new seawalls,” he said. 

He isn’t cynical about it; he’s been the person signing those permits. When houses are actively falling into the ocean, an agency approves the emergency armor. But emergency decisions, he said, “usually don’t get you where you want to be in the bigger picture.”

Property values aren’t always part of the legal test, Lester said, but they shape the options, and in Malibu, prices are high. The Commission always asks first whether a building can be moved back, Lester said, which is much easier for a mobile home than for a mansion on a narrow lot. The problem, he said, is an inherited coastline of expensive development “right on the edge in hazardous places.”

Lechuza Point, at the western end of Malibu’s Broad Beach, in 1972 (left) and 2024. What was once a wide sandy beach with little development is now lined with homes and has almost no beach left.

Finding a solution that preserves the wave, the beach and surrounding properties is far from easy. 

Australia’s Gold Coast offers one option, and a caution against tidy narratives. Kirra, once a similarly world-famous barreling wave, was an accident of engineering: Training walls extended across the nearby Tweed River in the 1960s starved the coast, and a groyne built at Kirra Point in 1973 to fix that unintentionally sculpted the wave surfers still mourn. Then a sand-bypassing system—pumping roughly the natural transport rate of half a million cubic meters a year across the river mouth—over-supplied the coast and buried Kirra beneath the vast sandbar known as the Superbank.

But Kirra came back. As the excess sand redistributed and managers restored the groyne’s original length, the wave returned, “especially during big swells,” said Griffith University coastal scientist Darrell Strauss, “when many other breaks do not.” 

When Cyclone Alfred battered the Gold Coast this year, eroding some four million cubic meters of sand, the city had a plan ready: a buried seawall as last defense, beaches nourished as the first. The southern points came through fine. “Apparently the surfing was fantastic at Kirra during the event,” said Griffith coastal engineer Rodger Tomlinson.

Tomlinson approaches the armoring question from the opposite end of Griggs and Lester: “Seawalls don’t cause erosion, erosion causes seawalls,” he said. The Gold Coast’s answer was not to renounce hard protection but to bury it beneath a beach it commits to maintaining, and to fold surf outcomes into coastal planning — even designing an artificial reef with surfing “front and centre.” California, in Malibu, is still dropping emergency rock and hoping.

Lester is skeptical that naming waves in planning documents is the fix, though he doesn’t dismiss it. The Coastal Commission has protected surfing for decades, he notes, mostly by protecting access; a permit for a mile-long seawall at Santa Cruz’s Pleasure Point carried conditions requiring future impacts to the surf break to be analyzed. Formally designating breaks “could be a good idea,” he said, in the same way naming a wetland raises its profile.

Meador doesn’t want a wall. She wants a plan for the sediment to be released from Rindge Dam over time and the lagoon managed so the beach can rebuild itself. Half of that is on its way, slowly. If funding comes through, the dam will start coming down in 2029, in stages over six to seven years, with about half its sediment trucked to nearby beaches, according to California State Parks. 

“Water moves fast,” Meador said, “but it could move fast in the right way, if you do it in the right way.” The surfers who are in the water every day have been asking for that for years, she said, while the people making the decisions “don’t even come down to the beach.”

Lester, from the other side of that table, lands somewhere similar. Planning exists, he said, “to try to get ahead of the things that we want to do a good job of responding to.” This winter will test how much of that California has done.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post A century of sand debt comes due in Malibu appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton say they’re mindful of voters’ worries about healthcare costs, but their plans don’t have much detail.

Last week, four of my Lookout Santa Cruz colleagues and I stepped away from our desks for two hours to volunteer at Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County. In those two hours, we packed more than 200 bags of groceries for local families – and left with an even greater appreciation for the people who make this work possible every day.

Our goal that morning was simple: help pack as many grocery bags as we could. Second Harvest aims to prepare around 600 bags in a single day to help serve families in our community who are experiencing food insecurity. While our group was busy filling bags, other volunteers were preparing and packaging fresh vegetables, bread and other groceries, working together to keep everything moving.

What stood out to me most was the pace and dedication of everyone in the room. Volunteers worked quickly and efficiently, knowing that every bag, box and package would eventually make its way to someone in our community who needs it. There was a real sense of purpose behind the work. Everyone had a job to do, and everyone was committed to doing it well.

It was also a reminder that giving back doesn’t always require a huge time commitment. Two hours may not sound like a lot, but together, our small group was able to help prepare more than 200 bags of groceries. Multiply that by the many volunteers who show up throughout the year, and the impact becomes significant.

For me, this experience was another meaningful opportunity to put into practice something I’ve been thinking about more and more: how can we, as a local company, continue to show up for the community we serve?

At Lookout Santa Cruz, we spend our days telling stories about this community, highlighting local organizations and businesses, and helping connect our readers with the people and places that make Santa Cruz County special. But there are also opportunities to step away from our desks and experience that community firsthand.

Volunteering at Second Harvest was one of those opportunities.

I was grateful to work alongside my colleagues and see firsthand the incredible amount of coordination, effort and care that goes into getting food from the food bank to local families. The work happening behind the scenes is admirable, and it takes an entire community of staff, volunteers, donors and partners to make it possible.

If you’ve ever considered volunteering with Second Harvest, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Whether you have a few hours to spare or are looking for a regular way to give back, it’s a tangible way to support local families and be part of something bigger than yourself.

I’m looking forward to continuing to find ways for our Lookout team to volunteer throughout Santa Cruz County. From packing groceries to cleaning up our beaches and supporting other local organizations, every opportunity to lend a hand is another opportunity to strengthen the community we’re lucky enough to call home.

Sometimes, making a difference starts with simply stepping away from your desk, rolling up your sleeves and asking, “How can I help?”

The post Stepping away from the desk and giving back with Second Harvest Food Bank appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

This post is updated throughout the day to reflect the latest incidents. It was last updated at 10:01 a.m..

Here’s what’s happening on the roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 10 a.m. on September 28

• The on-ramp to southbound Highway 1 at Park Avenue in Capitola is facing closures for paving work. The closure is expected to last until Nov. 19.
   
• Alternating lanes are closed on Highway 9 at Pool Drive in the San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. The closure is expected to last until April 30, 2027.

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Monday morning traffic: Highway 1 on-ramp at Park Avenue closed; Highway 9 lane closures appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Watsonville Community Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit has been closed since mid-July because of staffing shortages, with no reopening date set. Local maternal health advocates say the closure is adding anxiety for expecting families.

Week Without Driving, an annual effort that encourages people to use transit, bike, or walk instead of use cars, begins on Thursday and runs until the following Thursday, Oct, 8. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, Santa Cruz Metro, the county department of Community Development and Infrastructure and the Community Traffic Safety Coalition are partnering to promote the event.

Bright Plaza has become a talking point in the city of Santa Cruz’s debate over housing, development and neighborhood change. The site could eventually hold more than 200 affordable homes, along with space for local businesses. Here, Workbench owners Jamileh Cannon, Tim Gordin and Sibley Simon explain the reasoning behind the project – and that building here follows a long-standing city plan for denser housing along commercial corridors. They address the concerns surrounding the project, explain why they believe Santa Cruz needs to make room for more housing, and invite the public to join Tuesday’s community meeting about the project.

Para Nora Yerena, el cierre de la unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales del Watsonville Community Hospital es algo personal.

Como doula y cofundadora de la organización sin fines de lucro Raíces y Cariño, con sede en Watsonville, Yerena trabaja con padres de familia de todo el Valle de Pájaro mientras se preparan para dar a luz. También sabe de primera mano lo que significa tener que trasladar a un recién nacido a un hospital fuera de la zona para recibir atención de mayor nivel: uno de sus hijos pasó un tiempo en una UCIN antes de que cerrara la unidad de Watsonville, lo que obligó a su familia a viajar casi 45 minutos para visitar a su bebé.

“Dejar al bebé todos los días fue el peor día de mi vida,” dijo Yerena.

Ahora, mientras la unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales del Watsonville Community Hospital supera los dos meses de cierre, Yerena dijo a Lookout que está escuchando a madres embarazadas que están considerando dar a luz en otro lugar —en Dominican Hospital, en Santa Cruz, o en Natividad Medical Center, en Salinas— porque esos hospitales cuentan con UCIN en caso de una emergencia.

Para las familias que siguen planeando dar a luz en Watsonville, el cierre añade otra capa de incertidumbre y estrés, dijo Yerena.

Nora Yerena, cofundadora de Raíces y Cariño, habla sobre sus experiencias con la cobertura de Medi-Cal en 2025. Credit: Tania Ortiz / Lookout Santa Cruz

“Es una ansiedad que está constantemente presente,” ella dijo. “Ya estás enfrentando estas otras capas de estrés, además del estrés crónico de muchas de las madres que dan a luz en el Watsonville Community Hospital.”

La unidad de cuidados intensivos del hospital, que funciona como unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales, permanece cerrada desde mediados de julio debido a la falta de personal de enfermería en la unidad de trabajo de parto y parto, según el director ejecutivo interino Tim Moran. El hospital no ha establecido una fecha para reabrir la unidad.

Las UCIN se clasifican según el nivel de atención que brindan, de manera similar a los centros de trauma. La unidad de Watsonville es de Nivel II y proporciona atención intermedia a bebés nacidos a las 32 semanas de gestación o después que pueden presentar problemas leves de respiración y alimentación. También estabiliza a bebés más prematuros —nacidos antes de las 32 semanas— antes de trasladarlos a un hospital de mayor nivel.

El cierre está teniendo repercusiones que van más allá del lugar donde las familias dan a luz, dijo Yerena. Para algunos padres, representa otra fuente de estrés durante un embarazo que ya es exigente. Para otros, decidir dar a luz en otro hospital puede significar viajes adicionales, dificultades logísticas y separación del apoyo familiar.

“Es simplemente desgarrador,” dijo Yerena.

La organización de Yerena ofrece servicios de apoyo, incluidos grupos de apoyo para padres y clases prenatales, y es sede del Tri-County Doula Hub.

Como doula, Yerena está en primera línea, conectándose con padres que se preparan para recibir a un nuevo bebé en sus familias. Su principal prioridad es asegurarse de que las familias se sientan apoyadas durante todo el proceso del embarazo.

Aunque no son profesionales médicos, las doulas complementan al equipo de salud de la madre al brindar apoyo físico y emocional a las familias con las que trabajan. Esto incluye crear un espacio seguro para conversar sobre qué hacer si el bebé necesita una evaluación médica o para tomar decisiones sobre dónde dar a luz.

Dominican, en Santa Cruz, y Natividad, en Salinas, cuentan con UCIN de Nivel III, equipadas para atender casos más críticos y bebés nacidos antes de las 32 semanas. Ambas instalaciones tienen acuerdos de transferencia de pacientes con el Watsonville Community Hospital.

Sin embargo, aunque algunos padres están optando por dar a luz en otros hospitales de la región, todavía hay muchas familias que no tienen esa posibilidad.

Yerena dijo a Lookout que las familias que siguen eligiendo dar a luz en el Watsonville Community Hospital comprenden los riesgos de sus decisiones, lo que añade otra capa de estrés.

Los estudios han demostrado que el estrés puede estar asociado con el nacimiento prematuro —antes de las 37 semanas—, la depresión posparto, la ansiedad y el sufrimiento fetal. Muchas de las mujeres que dan a luz en el Watsonville Community Hospital ya enfrentan una “cantidad increíble de estrés y dificultades” debido a sus trabajos, que a menudo están relacionados con la agricultura o los servicios, o debido a que tienen que cuidar de sus familias, dijo Yerena.

Y esto genera un efecto dominó, añadió Yerena, aumentando finalmente la probabilidad de intervenciones médicas y de una posible estancia en la UCIN.

“Todo está relacionado,” dijo Yerena. “Todo está entrelazado”.

“Ahora estamos agregando esta capa de ‘¿Qué pasa si mi bebé necesita atención hospitalaria después del nacimiento? ¿Qué pasa si necesita la UCIN? ¿A dónde se van a llevar a mi bebé?’” dijo Yerena.

Las madres cuyos bebés están en la UCIN presentan tasas más altas de depresión posparto que las mujeres que dan a luz a bebés sanos. Los padres que se encuentran en esta situación suelen estar separados de sus bebés, lo que puede limitar las oportunidades de pasar el tiempo tan necesario entre la madre y su bebé y puede resultar estresante, tanto física como emocionalmente.

Sandra Morioka, una enfermera jubilada de la UCIN del Watsonville Community Hospital, dijo a Lookout que el cierre prolongado ha creado dificultades para las familias, especialmente aquellas con menos recursos, que tienen que viajar para visitar a su bebé en un hospital fuera de Watsonville.

“Estamos hablando de tres horas al día yendo y viniendo, además de cuidar a la familia y a los niños que están aquí y que también tienen que atender,” dijo Morioka. “Es un compromiso muy grande que tienes que asumir.”

Sandra Morioka, enfermera jubilada de la unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales (UCIN), habla en una manifestación celebrada en agosto contra el cierre en curso de la UCIN del Watsonville Community Hospital. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Según Yerena, lo que normalmente ayuda a las familias que necesitan la UCIN es apoyar a los padres y crear un espacio donde puedan estar con su bebé, por ejemplo, colocando una silla o encontrando un lugar donde puedan descansar.

Los bebés terminan saliendo antes de la UCIN cuando están junto a sus padres, dijo Yerena.

“Se recuperan más rápido. Necesitan menos intervenciones y disminuyen las tasas de trastornos posparto y de ansiedad,” dijo Yerena.

El cierre de la UCIN también plantea otra preocupación para Yerena: la sostenibilidad del hospital.

“Si tenemos a un montón de personas que están eligiendo no dar a luz [en el Watsonville Community Hospital], eso representa ingresos adicionales que no están llegando al hospital,” dijo Yerena.

Aproximadamente el 31% de los bebés nacidos en el condado de Santa Cruz nacen en el Watsonville Community Hospital, ligeramente por encima del 29% que nace en Dominican Hospital. En promedio, el hospital atiende 60 partos al mes y, en julio, reportó 70 partos.

Morioka, quien participó en una manifestación a finales de agosto para protestar contra el cierre de la UCIN, dijo que “es realmente fundamental” contar con la unidad porque “nunca se sabe cuándo llegará alguien que necesite atención de emergencia.”

Moran dijo a Lookout por correo electrónico que su principal preocupación es la seguridad de las madres, no el volumen de pacientes. Todo bebé que nace en el hospital es evaluado por un pediatra de Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital de Stanford para determinar “dónde puede recibir la atención necesaria.”

Tim Moran, director ejecutivo interino del Watsonville Community Hospital. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Si un bebé se encuentra en “una fase aguda de sufrimiento,” dijo Moran, el hospital solicitaría un traslado en helicóptero, y añadió que esta situación es poco frecuente.

“Es triste para nosotros porque sabemos que podríamos atender a muchos de esos bebés,” dijo Morioka. “Y aquí, en el Watsonville Community Hospital, con todos nuestros médicos especializados y nuestra experiencia, podríamos hacerlo aquí, en casa.”

Moran dijo a Lookout que no existe un plazo establecido para la reapertura de la unidad.

Lisa Whitney, enfermera a cargo de trabajo de parto y parto, dijo que es frustrante que la dirección del hospital no haya compartido con ellos un calendario para la reapertura. Ella se unió a Morioka y a decenas de otras enfermeras y miembros de la comunidad en la manifestación del mes pasado para presionar a Moran y a otros dirigentes del hospital para que vuelvan a abrir la UCIN.

La falta de un plazo también hace que enfermeras como Whitney sospechen que podría haber un cierre permanente en el futuro, aunque la dirección del hospital afirma que el cierre es temporal.

“Todo lo que hemos escuchado es que no hay ningún plan para un cierre permanente y que volverá a abrir una vez que haya suficiente personal estable,” dijo Whitney. “Entonces, ¿cuál es el plan para lograrlo?”

En una reunión especial de la junta directiva del hospital la semana pasada, el personal informó que el cierre definitivo tanto de la UCIN como de las unidades de trabajo de parto y parto es una posible solución para garantizar que el centro pueda seguir abierto.

Julie Peterson, directora financiera del hospital, dijo a la junta que la UCIN pierde aproximadamente $53,000 al día, o cerca de $2 millones al año. También añadió que el volumen de pacientes en ambas unidades ha disminuido en 2026.

“Hemos estado evaluando y escuchando todos los comentarios sobre el impacto en los pacientes y en la comunidad,” dijo Peterson. “Reconocemos que será un desafío mantener cualquier tipo de relación positiva con la comunidad ante una decisión de este tipo.”

No se ha presentado ante la junta directiva del hospital ninguna propuesta formal para cerrar permanentemente ambas unidades.

Mientras continúa el cierre temporal, Yerena dijo que tiene muchas preocupaciones, principalmente por los efectos inmediatos sobre los bebés y las madres de la comunidad.

“Sabemos que si la salud mental de un padre, y más específicamente de quien está dando a luz, no está bien, la salud del bebé también se ve afectada,” dijo Yerena. Para garantizar que los bebés de nuestra comunidad prosperen, necesitan tener padres saludables, dijo Yerena.

Pero Yerena también se pregunta qué está ocurriendo en los hospitales a los que se trasladan los bebés y qué impacto podría tener esto en esas instalaciones. Si los padres eligen dar a luz en otros lugares, eso podría sobrecargar a otros centros médicos.

Las enfermeras que participaron en la manifestación del mes pasado también expresaron preocupaciones similares y calificaron el cierre temporal como una “pendiente resbaladiza” que podría provocar una brecha en la atención de algunas de las poblaciones más vulnerables y potencialmente crear “desiertos de atención materna,” es decir, áreas que carecen de servicios de atención médica materna.

“Esto simplemente seguirá afectando la atención médica,” dijo Yerena.

The post La unidad de cuidados intensivos neonatales Watsonville Community Hospital sigue cerrada, aumentando la ansiedad entre las familias que esperan un bebé appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Kaiser Permanente Arena erupted with screams, slams and cheers as World Elite Sumo brought California’s first televised sumo wrestling event to Santa Cruz. Photojournalist Kevin Painchaud takes a peek behind the scenes and onto the mat as 12 wrestlers battled for the championship.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for its daily newsletter.

For many students, UC Santa Cruz’s picturesque campus plays a major part in their decision to attend the university.

The campus is built in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, meaning it sits on an upward slope, gaining around 512 feet in elevation. Students entering campus often must trudge through dirt paths shaded by giant redwood trees and climb up steep hills or stairs to get to the next destination.

But for students such as Annie Kepler, a cancer survivor who uses a wheelchair, navigating the sprawling campus is a much more arduous experience — so much so that it’s left the fourth-year microbiology major feeling “defeated.” 

“UCSC loves to boast about diversity, but they never include disability in that,” Kepler said. 

UCSC’s Disability Resource Center reported serving more than 3,800 students in the 2021-2022 academic year, ranging from physical to neurological disabilities. 

From academic accommodations to physical support, spaces on campus work to provide aid for students with disabilities, university officials said. Scott Hernandez-Jason, the assistant vice chancellor for communications and marketing at UCSC, said the university has made efforts to create an inclusive environment.

“While many students successfully access services, accessibility remains an ongoing process rather than a static goal,” Hernandez-Jason said in an email. “We are dedicated to making sure student voices are heard as we work toward greater inclusion and equitable access.” 

“UC Santa Cruz opened in 1965 and was constructed under the building standards of the time,” Hernandez-Jason added.

As the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted in 1990, he said, institutions “expanded efforts to make their facilities accessible to people with disabilities.” This included making “improving campus accessibility a goal within all of our major construction and renovation projects.”

But longstanding accessibility challenges have given Kepler and other students with disabilities the impression that the university does not recognize disability and mobility as a priority. 

“There is this fundamental issue that the physical space that we’re in is not accessible,” she said. “This campus was not designed with accessibility in mind, and there isn’t much you can do to change that infrastructure.”

Getting around UC Santa Cruz

In her first year, Kepler was assigned to a triple dorm room in College 9, a residential college located in the upper portion of the campus. Her room was under 200 square feet. She struggled to find a space where she could store her wheelchair and found it difficult to visit her friends on the second or third floors without subjecting herself to physical pain. 

“I learned pretty quickly that I just shouldn’t bother using my wheelchair here,” Kepler said. 

The ADA-required push plates in her building would not work at times, she said, and she felt embarrassed when others watched her struggle to open the door. 

Ruby Mihalko, a community studies major and theater arts minor at UCSC, also found it hard to get around campus on crutches after injuring her ankle.

Mihalko lived in a third-floor dorm, which did not have an elevator. It took around 10 days to gain access to a first-floor dorm; she relied on friends to help her use the stairs when coming or going.

Kepler was able to bring her car onto campus in her first year for more mobility. UCSC students with a valid Department of Motor Vehicles placard are allowed to park in specified parking spots for free. 

Mihalko, who does not own a vehicle, utilized the campus’ disability van service (DVS) to get around. While the service was helpful, she felt that the shuttles were understaffed. As well, the service could often get her near her destination, but she still had to find her way into the building. 

“Walking with my crutches felt very scary, going to places that [I was unfamiliar with]. I just didn’t do that because I was too scared of falling considering that every single piece of pavement on this campus is extremely different and very uneven,” Mihalko said. “It definitely created a lot of fear.” 

She said that one of her friends would sometimes even pick her up and carry her to class. 

UCSC provides housing to more than 9,300 students, less than half of the student population, meaning that many students must live off campus. Affordable housing is scarce in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, where the average price of a rental being over $2,700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.

According to Kepler, finding a place to live is much harder when searching for specific accommodations, such as buildings with elevators or apartments with enough space for wheelchair mobility.

“It’s difficult because not everything can work for everyone,” she said. “That’s just a fact of the world, and we are the minority. We really are.” 

Apart from mobility limitations, Kepler and Mihalko also addressed the social stigma of having a disability. Both spoke about common outdoor activities in Santa Cruz, like biking, jogging, skateboarding, swimming and especially surfing.

“Part of [having a] disability is accepting the fact that there are just things you can’t do in life,” Kepler said. “Everyone makes their own individual peace with that, but it is disappointing that the campus doesn’t put more of an effort to create more accessible activities, or invite disabled students to explore those activities.” She also wished UCSC had better advertised accessible hikes, and which beaches had ramps with rental beach wheelchairs. 

‘I think there is a way to make it work’ 

Beyond the DRC and van service, the university provides Disability Management Services and staffs an ADA Compliance Office. But having faced the challenges of being a student with a disability at UCSC, Kepler took initiative to create a space, called the Zebra Club, where students can talk about their experiences and even make change for others throughout campus.

The Zebra Club meets with the DRC regularly to talk about accessibility, in hopes of making change around the campus. She said that, after meeting with university administrators, through meetings with administration, Zebra Club students felt they are trying their best to improve accessibility, but lack resources to do so. 

“I often wonder if I would have come to UCSC if I knew about how inaccessible it is,” Kepler said. “Socially, emotionally, physically — there are barriers in every single place.”

She said future students with disabilities at UC Santa Cruz should not hesitate to advocate for more accessibility changes.

“Your story is important, and you are a valuable member of the community. You’re not a burden to be accommodated.”

Bryce Chen is a fourth-year legal studies and literature student at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post For students with disabilities, UC Santa Cruz campus can prove punishing to navigate appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for its newsletters.

The tension between tourists, Californians living in the state’s coastal enclaves, and the tech companies that profit from vacation rentals is coming to a boil.  

The small coastal city of Pacifica has recently become the poster child for the battle between Airbnb and the unhappy locals. Officials in Pacifica recently tried to pass rules aimed at curtailing short-term vacation rentals, only to meet unexpected stiff resistance. That led to delays and watered-down regulations that some sources attribute to Airbnb’s lobbying efforts.   

California’s coastal zone makes up just over 1% of the state’s total land area but accounts for a significant amount of Airbnb’s reported economic impact, according to the company. Airbnb says it contributed around $13.9 billion annually to the state’s gross domestic product in 2025, nearly 17% of it — almost $2.3 billion — generated from the coastal zone.

The lucrative nature of California’s coast as a tourist destination has brought Airbnb into regular conflict with the California Coastal Commission.

The commission has the ultimate say on regulatory, planning and permitting matters that affect land use and development in the 1.5 million acres of coastline designated as the coastal zone. 

Established as an independent state agency in 1972, the coastal commission was created to mitigate a rush of private development that threatened public access to the shoreline and its coastal ecosystems. The body is led by 12 appointed commissioners. The governor, the Legislature’s Senate Rules Committee and the speaker of the Assembly are in charge of appointing four commissioners each.

Airbnb has lobbied the leaders of all three legislative bodies, and Pacifica’s recent experience illustrates how that influence might be manifesting. 

“I think the reason why this is such an important issue for Pacifica is because they are the canary in the coal mine of cities in other parts of California that have become hollowed-out communities without the characters that make up the character of the city,” said Commissioner Ariel Kelly of Healdsburg. 

Pacifica residents push back  

Situated just south of San Francisco, Pacifica is home to roughly 37,000 people and is divided along Highway 1 by the coastal zone. Houses are nestled into nearly every inch of buildable land, surrounded by open space and next to a shoreline known for its surfing and the country’s most scenic Taco Bell. It is a quiet, foggy bedroom community. 

Available listings for both permitted and unpermitted Airbnbs averaged about 148 a month in 2018 and 251 by 2025, an increase of roughly 70%, according to AirDNA, a data-analytics company that tracks the short-term rental market. Over 40% of all Airbnbs in Pacifica are operated by a company, rather than an individual person.

Residents filed more than 160 complaints to the Pacifica Police Department between August 2023 and December 2025, the majority of them reporting loud parties with dozens of guests and trespassers coming onto neighboring properties. Local meetings were heated: Residents wanted stricter rules around the rentals while city officials pointed out that the city needed the taxes they generated.

Residents’ increasing complaints eventually catalyzed the city’s effort to rewrite the vacation rental rules beginning in 2022. The matter became the subject of 14 public meetings  in four years.

Pacifica officials concluded that a property with no host onsite could only be rented 60 days a year, down from 365. Short-term rental owners had to be “natural persons” and not corporations. These and other rules would cut the number of operating rentals in half by former city manager Kevin Woodhouse’s estimates. 

Pacifica is among dozens of other jurisdictions, from neighboring Half Moon Bay to Monterey County to Malibu, that have pursued similar ordinances, while Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach attempted to ban short-term rentals entirely.

A view of southern Pacifica from Beach Boulevard. Thirty-one rentals are listed as available on Airbnb for a week in October in Pacifica’s Sharp Park neighborhood, an area of less than half a square mile that includes Beach Boulevard. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler The balcony of Caitlin Quinn’s home in Pacifica. Quinn moved into her home to be close to the ocean. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler

While Pacifica implemented the ordinance in the non-coastal part of the city in October 2025, it had to undergo additional steps for the coastal commission to approve it for the coastal zone. 

The commission was scheduled to hear the ordinance in February. A staff report recommended approving it, leading Pacificans to believe the new rules would be swiftly confirmed. 

Mere minutes into the meeting, however, the vote was postponed. 

“Our agency received a significant amount of correspondence after the staff report was released to the public,” said Joshua Smith, a public information officer for the commission. “Staff felt it needed additional time to research and respond to this correspondence to adequately inform commissioners on all the points and perspectives expressed.”

Then, at April’s commission meeting, it was delayed again — this time for a year. 

About 206 pages of the total 209 pages of correspondence came from one attorney, Frank Angel, and his client, Pacifica Airbnb host Russell Jones.

Angel is a land-use attorney in Santa Monica who has carved a name for himself as the litigator behind several landmark California short-term rental lawsuits. He’s represented vacation rental owners in lawsuits against the cities of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Santa Ana, all of which he won. He represents a group of Monterey County residents, the Monterey County Vacation Rental Alliance, who sued the county in 2024 and the coastal commission in August, contesting the county’s recent short-term rental rules.  After his successes, Airbnb hired him as a lobbyist in 2025.

Airbnb paid Angel nearly $90,000 between Jan. 1, 2025, and March 2026 to lobby against Pacifica’s ordinance, and $75,000 to lobby against short-term rental restrictions in Monterey, according to California Secretary of State records. Airbnb reported spending more than $615,000 on state lobbying between April 2025 and June 2026, a period in which its disclosures list efforts to defeat short-term rental restrictions in Monterey County and Pacifica before the coastal commission. 

In August, the issue returned to the commission once more. This time, staff recommended that Pacifica eliminate the primary residency requirement and remove any cap on the number of nights an unhosted rental can operate. 

Those suggested changes reflected significant components of the requests Angel and Jones made to the commission in February. At the August meeting, commission spokesperson Smith said staff did not feel the changes were substantial. 

Pacificans, and some commissioners, wholly disagreed. 

Smith would not agree to speak to CalMatters on the record. 

Caitlin Quinn has been a Pacifica resident for nearly 10 years and lives next door to a corporate-owned short-term rental whose owners have faced dozens of complaints and were recently kicked off of Airbnb as a result, but remain active on VRBO. She urged commissioners to reject recommendations in the staff report. 

Caitlin Quinn in her home in Pacifica. Quinn lives along Beach Boulevard and has filed four criminal cases against her neighbor, Marbella Lane Vacation Rentals. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler

The agency’s reversal reeked of corporate influence, Quinn said, directly undercutting its claim to being impervious to outside influence.

“You’re all thinking, feeling people, and you know what the truth is, and what the right decision is to pass this ordinance without amendment,” she told the commissioners. “I know this because I have a thing called a memory, and I remember six months ago your staff report suggested just that, and you were all poised to do it before a big tech corporation started rattling its sabers. We can be better than greed, can’t we? And we can still stand up to bullies, can’t we? I hope so.”

In the decade since short-term rentals exploded in popularity and California cities began seeing a need for ways to curb them, the commission’s decisions have broadly favored allowing restrictions on short-term rentals. While the commission has historically rejected any proposals to ban vacation rentals outright, it has almost always sided with cities — from San Diego to Pacifica’s neighbor, Half Moon Bay — that proposed capping the number of rentals and favoring rentals owners live in. 

Over the past two decades, the commission’s decisions reveal this trend. The commission’s votes have also favored rules that regulate which kinds of homes can be used as rentals, seeking to preserve multifamily units, farmworker housing and accessory dwelling units as long-term rentals. 

Ordinances passed in the past decade almost universally include rules around parking, noise, property management, enforcement and transient occupancy taxes. 

But something had shifted at the August meeting on Pacifica.

This time, commission staff appeared uncharacteristically worried. Dan Carl, the North Central Coast District director at the commission, said the points made in the flood of correspondence were legitimate and concerning. Those points came almost entirely from Angel and his client, Jones, who argued that Pacifica’s restrictions violate the Coastal Act by restricting visitor access.

“To have [staff’s] recommendation come out in February, and then be rescinded is just unprecedented in my professional experience,” City Manager Sean Charpentier told the commissioners. “During 20-plus years in the public sector, 10 at the executive level, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The coastal commission voted, after four hours of discussion, to eliminate Pacifica’s primary residence requirement. In a separate vote, commissioners went against staff’s recommendation and agreed to cap unhosted rentals to 120 days a year, doubling the 60 days a year the city had proposed.

Jose Alvarado, Airbnb’s public policy manager, said, “The commission’s decision related to Pacifica is a win for every Californian who believes the coast belongs to everyone: not just those who can afford to live beside it.” 

Previously, the commission has appeared unmoved by the possibility of external litigation; the agency has a well-documented pattern of aggressive enforcement even as lawsuits have piled up against it. That pattern led to the commission’s legacy as an all-powerful land-use agency that has drawn the ire of both Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump. 

Regulating the ordinances is “just getting more complicated,” and as a result, “We’re getting more legal challenges,” Carl said. 

Airbnb lobbying efforts 

Deborah Sivas, director of the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic and an expert on environmental policy, said the commission’s willingness to water down the rules reflects something far more insidious. 

“It feels like right now there’s kind of this historic convergence of folks who want to try to weaken the coastal commission and pare back the Coastal Act,” she said.  

In recent years, Airbnb helped do just that, becoming one of the most influential forces working against the commission, which has historically faced lawsuits and backlash from developers. 

“Airbnb has decided it’s hard to stop short-term rental ordinances at the local level because if you’ve got some city along the coast and all their residents are up in arms about short-term rentals, it’s going to be hard for Airbnb to go in there,” Sivas said. “But if [Airbnb] can go after the commission and make the commission the bad guy, then none of their ordinances will get approved because they’ll make the commission scared.”

The company is now spending more to lobby government entities across California and the country than ever. Airbnb spent $1.09 million on federal lobbying in 2025, up from $260,000 just 10 years prior, according to Open Secrets, a website that tracks data on campaign finance, lobbying and how money influences American politics. 

In its $615,000 spent on lobbying in the 2025-26 legislative session, Airbnb reported spending some of that money specifically to influence “Coastal Commission Appointees,” according to public lobbyist filings, although the exact amount is not clear. 

Sivas said spending that much money lobbying is an effective strategy and “it’s pretty easy” to influence who gets appointed, thereby shifting policy toward regulations that serve Airbnb.

The view of the neighboring Airbnb from Caitlin Quinn’s home in Pacifica. The rental often has loud, late-night parties that can be heard inside Quinn’s house. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler A security camera hangs below the balcony of Caitlin Quinn’s home. Quinn installed security cameras on her property pointed towards the vacation rental to capture the violations she has reported for years. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler A “Quiet Zone” sign near the entrance of a vacation rental in Pacifica. Marbella Lane Vacation Rentals erected the sign to try to curb noise violations. Credit: Kathryn Wheeler

Airbnb has also directed significant campaign contributions to the leaders of the three legislative bodies that appoint coastal commissioners. Newsom has received nearly $500,000 from Airbnb and its employees toward the campaigns and committees he’s controlled, Secretary of State filings show. 

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat from Hollister who is in charge of appointing four of the commissioners, received $22,800 — reaching the legal maximum limit per election — from Airbnb between 2023 and 2026. Four months after she was elected, Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón, whose Rules Committee appoints four more commissioners, received $9,800 from Airbnb for her 2030 state controller campaign. 

Airbnb has given more than $1.2 million to the campaigns of California state lawmakers and candidates since 2014, according to state campaign finance records. Nearly half of those donations have come since the start of 2025, as the company fought short-term rental restrictions before the coastal commission. It has given another $370,000 to ballot measure campaigns.

Alvarado acknowledged Airbnb’s increasing reach into government affairs. “To date, we’ve partnered with over 1,000 governments around the world to support common sense rules for short-term rentals.” 

Airbnb influence outside Pacifica

Even California cities that thought they had successfully curbed short-term rentals are now facing substantial legal challenges. Southern California’s Hermosa Beach banned short-term rentals citywide in 2016, including in its coastal zone. In March 2026, residents represented by Angel won a lawsuit to reverse that ban, allowing Airbnbs to operate in coastal Hermosa Beach.

Airbnb also began not just backing but spearheading policy initiatives. 

In 2024, Airbnb developed a  “housing council,” which supports pro-affordable housing efforts and measures to loosen restrictions on building housing. The company has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to housing policy organizations like Up for Growth and YIMBY Action. YIMBY Action now supports fewer restrictions on short-term rentals, despite concerns that rentals further strain California’s housing stock. 

Airbnb also funneled roughly $17.6 million into its own political committee to fund the Save Our Services campaign in the last two years. The Los Angeles-based campaign seeks to revise the city’s home-sharing ordinance, which only allows primary residences to be used as short-term rentals. Airbnb was not named as a backer on the campaign website or flyers until the Los Angeles Times published an investigation revealing the group’s ties. 

More ordinance battles to come 

One California senator is attempting to reduce the commission’s power to block short-term rental restrictions in coastal communities: In May, Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat, introduced a Senate Bill 1318 that would require the coastal commission to approve any local government’s land-use permit amendment that restricts or bans unhosted short-term rentals, even if other visitor lodging is scarce. A community must be struggling to meet local housing needs and the commission would need to agree that the restriction fairly balances housing needs with public coastal access.

For now, Pacifica has concluded it will accept the commission’s suggested modifications to be able to have an ordinance in place this year, with the deadline for commission review in October. If the city wanted to contest the commission’s recommendations, it would have to rework its ordinance through a months-long mandatory public process and have the commission review it once more, which would likely yield the same result, officials stated. 

Quinn, who continues to regularly file complaints about the corporate-owned short-term rental next door, said she was “greatly disappointed in seeing a governmental agency cave in the face of threatened litigation by a tech Goliath.” She worries that corporations like her neighbors will continue to “take homes out of the hands of families who want and need them.”

Pacifica could signal that pressure from Airbnb is working. As lawsuits play out in Monterey County and other coastal communities — from Santa Barbara to Encinitas — prepare to take their ordinances to the coastal commission, Pacifica’s outcome could shape how far local restrictions can go.

Ray Jackson, a commissioner from Hermosa Beach, which has struggled to regulate short-term rentals, said. “It’s very germane. It’s relevant. It’s real, and we’re certainly going to have more of these.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post How Airbnb is fighting for its place on California’s coast appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.