Santa Barbara Humane has been a part of my life for a long time, and the state that it is operating in now makes me both sad and disgusted. Staff is leaving at an alarming rate, mostly because of the lack empathy from the administration that is supposed to prioritize their mental health. People no longer want to be part of an organization that is so focused on money and building bigger and better facilities that they forget about the life blood of their organization, their employees.
And who suffers in all of this? The animals. The animals that often by no fault of their own have ended up homeless.
Santa Barbara Humane brought on an executive director who was supposed to breathe new life into one of the oldest humane societies in California, and instead, euthanasias have gone up considerably in the last year or so. Because of lack of staff, animals aren’t getting what they need to thrive and are deemed “unadoptable.”
Something needs to change, and fast. Pretty soon Santa Barbara Humane will have nothing to boast about.