Luck Has Something to Do With It

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OUT OF DEBT: Brandy and Steven were hard workers, but bills began to pile up and then Baby Brianna arrived. Homelessness loomed.

“We moved up to Lompoc to try to save whatever money we could and commuted every day to our jobs in Santa Barbara,” Steven said. “Then the price of gasoline started going through the roof. It seemed like all our money went to pay for gas, and we fell behind with our rent and our debt payments.”

He continued, “We had always had jobs and taken care of ourselves, but it seemed like we were having a harder and harder time keeping up with our bills. We never knew how much money we had and we didn’t make good decisions about how to spend it. It felt like we were not much more than kids ourselves. How would we take care of a baby?” (Steven is 36 and his wife is 24.)

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The stress was taking a heavy toll on their relationship. A year ago, they became homeless and had almost lost hope. “Our commitment to Brianna was the turning point we needed to get our lives together,” Steven said. “That’s when Brandy found Transition House,” the family shelter.

“It hurt my pride to think that I couldn’t take care of my family and we would be living in a shelter,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d find help. I just thought that a shelter was a place to sleep, with too many rules. I thought I would hate it, but Transition House turned out to be so different from what I had imagined,” Steven wrote in a note to Transition House supporters. “Our case manager really saved us. She helped us look at our finances and our debt and prioritize our payments.” As a result, after about four months, the family was thriving and moved to the Firehouse, transitional housing out of Transition House. In March, they moved to an apartment, also as part of Transition House’s program.

Today, they are debt-free and have savings in the bank. Their attitude toward money “has completely changed,” Steven said. “We like the challenge of budgeting and we watch every penny we spend.” He’s working at UCSB, where his health insurance covers the family, which now includes Seanna, born last November. Brandy also is working.

Homeless just months ago, Brandy has a dream that will surely come true: “Maybe one day we’ll get to see our daughters graduate from UCSB.”

NOT DEAD: Reports of Santa Barbara Assembly candidate Susan Jordan’s death are, in Mark Twain’s words, greatly exaggerated. She’s very much alive and well, despite the San Francisco Chronicle running her photo with an obit of another Susan Jordan, a longtime Bay Area lefty attorney. Our Susan Jordan had to field calls from friends across the country and assure them that she was okay, according to Jerry Roberts’s Calbuzz Friday Fishwrap political blog. Seems that the Chron used an AP story, but mistakenly attached our Susan’s photo. “The Chroniclers ran a no-big-deal correction, but no one from the paper bothered to contact the family of the wrong Susan Jordan to apologize,” Jerry pointed out. Reminds me of the time, decades ago, when a former mayor was ill and the News-Press had prewritten an obit to have ready just in case. Anyway, the typed-out ex-mayor’s obit (this was pre-computer) was in City Editor John Ball’s basket, ready to go. Unfortunately, another department head from downstairs was wandering in the newsroom. He spotted the obit and thoughtfully phoned the mayor’s wife with condolences. The ex-mayor lived on for quite a while, as I recall.

S.B. GONE RIGHT? With so many conservatives crowding onto the Santa Barbara City Council ballot, some City Hall watchers are wondering if the council, long a bastion of progressives, will move to the right in November.

JUNE GLOOM: I sit here shivering, recalling fondly the balmy nights last week by Lake Las Vegas (human-made, 17 miles from the Strip), sipping 2007 New Zealand pinot and nibbling aged Gouda. We did venture into Sin City itself, entering a far different world at the Mirage’s delightful Beatles show, Love.

Las Vegas is a place where you can buy a $1,000 martini and a $6,000 burger. The Signature Tower at MGM Grand offers to whip up a $1,000 High Limit martoonie, using a locked-up bottle of Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac, Hypnotia French liquor, and pineapple juice. Over at Hubert Keller’s Fleur de Lys in the Mandalay Bay, a Kobe FleurBurger runs $5,000, but comes with a bottle of 1990 Château Pétrus. For this kind of money your guest also gets a burger. At the Palms, a $6 Carl’s Jr. burger runs $6,000, but comes with a 24-year-old bottle of Bordeaux. Even a relatively ordinary dinner can run you $300-plus at some places. Demand for all of this excess seems quite low these days. Though crowds still swarm the Strip, and the slots and sluts are busy, Lost Wages has been hit by Old Man Recession and deserted, for now, by Lady Luck.

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