Thank you

A Thanksgiving visit to Ojai Tent Town and the thing I *really* want to say.

Greeting readers!

Yesterday I happily lugged a 16lb pot of garlic mashed potatoes¹ to Ojai Tent Town. In collaboration with a group of volunteers and Tent Town residents, we offered a Thanksgiving feast.

The potatoes! Note the city-provided tents in the background.

More than a year ago now, I began wandering through the homeless encampment on the Ojai City Hall campus that has since become Ojai Tent Town, conducting interviews with anyone willing to talk.

The Ojai City Hall campus as seen in September 2023. Most campers now reside in City-provided tents on (and around) the Kent Hall parking lot.

The City Hall campus is a loaded space for me — it’s where my dad worked a demanding job for a good decade of my childhood. Where my brother and I walked after school each day to catch a ride the rest of the way home. It’s where I took my high school graduation photos.

Now, it’s the site of a 30-person homeless encampment.² And every time I walked through in those early days, I met someone who attended Ojai’s Nordhoff High School — or sent their children there. (I graduated from Nordhoff in 2005, which was somehow 20 years ago).

Recently, I encountered the mother of one of my Topa Topa Elementary school classmates — who lives in her vehicle. Every time I meet an unhoused person with a last name I remember from my childhood, I feel it in my stomach. And I feel an intense need to document the story.

To me, Ojai Tent Town provides a picture of California’s housing crisis. It’s the inevitable outcome of income inequality in a small “picturesque” southern California community. We see million dollar homes neighboring a tent encampment — not to mention that this unhoused community sprang up at our local government center. It’s a picture worth several thousand words.

What I reflected on yesterday, though, was how people I’ve come to know in and around Tent Town — from residents to volunteers to support staff to neighbors — in the space of one year, became a community of people to whom I was thrilled to introduce to my mother. (Thank you mom for accompanying me!)

Speaking of people I was excited to introduce to my mother: OTT resident Jamie Nelson. Nelson raised her kids in Ojai.

So here’s the thing I really want to say: I would not be able to invest my time and energy into the story of Ojai Tent Town, if not for your support (literally YOU, the individual reading this right now).

Thank you.

Something I felt intensely earlier in my life was a sometimes overwhelming sense of unknowing. A question that constantly seemed to float to the top of mind in quiet moments — what is my purpose? What am I supposed to do with my life?

I no longer believe that should or supposed to exists outside of our own heads, but I do believe that everyone has a gift to share with the community around them. Maybe that’s the only should.

Sometimes I preface this statement in conversation with, maybe I’m delusional, but… I feel an intense certainty about the work I do in this space. I have a sense of total clarity that these stories are important. That helping my community understand the who and how and why is something I can (should?) uniquely offer.

Or maybe I’m delusional. Whether the former or the latter — I’m going to keep typing.

I’ll be back in your inboxes soon with a final update (I hope?) on the pickleball saga. Next will be an update on Tent Town and Ojai’s $12.7 Encampment Resolution Funding. And after that will be the long-promised OUSD update — which is becoming something like my own personal infrastructure week. (Sorry for the dumb joke that is probably not even recognizable as a joke — it’s my specialty!)

1. In total, I mashed 20lb of yukon gold potatoes with three sticks of butter, four heads of garlic and a whole bunch of milk. Luckily, no one objected to my heavy-handedness.

2. Not to mention the pickleball courts.