Good Samaritan Is an Organization
That Actually Helps People
The first time I met Sylvia Barnard — chief cook and bottle washer for the Good Samaritan homeless shelter enterprise — it was at Hedges House of Hope, a former sorority house in Isla Vista that she had magically transformed into a sanctuary for people living on the street.
At that time, COVID was in its full epidemiological fury, UCSB was closed to students, and Isla’s Vista’s parks had been taken over by tents, cardboard lean-tos, shopping carts, sleeping bags, old bicycles, trash, and other signs of life common to homeless encampments.
Drugs were rampant and overdoses common. Emergency workers found it all but impossible to even locate the ill and dying, let alone to haul them out on stretchers. Sexual assaults were reportedly commonplace. And the obvious risk of fire under such perilous conditions had the county fire marshal pulling his hair out…