On the longest night of the year, December 21, 2025, about 75 people gathered beneath the archway of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse to call out the names of 69 neighbors who had died homeless in our county during the past year. One name was Timothy John Largent, a 31-year-old man from Bakersfield who died of a fentanyl overdose at the bottom of Mission Creek. He just wanted, as I said that night, one night when his skull wasn’t screaming. One night of rest without terror scratching the inside of his skull. Instead, he found death at the bottom of the creek.
Sixty-nine names. And that number is almost certainly an undercount. The county’s systematic tracking of homeless deaths has lapsed in recent years. The dead go unnamed in the public record. They simply vanish.
This is a moral emergency hiding in plain sight in one of the wealthiest communities on Earth…