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When the pandemic hit in 2020, La Casa Founders Holding Company purchased the building at auction. Our nonprofit organization partnered with the new ownership to reopen its doors to the community. Soon after, the building received official landmark designation, restoring its historical name: La Casa de la Raza. Today, the Restorative Justice Education Center continues to serve from this iconic space — supporting families in crisis, uplifting community voices, and keeping the doors open while the building undergoes its final transformation.
A New Beginning for La Casa de la Raza- A PERSONAL STATEMENT FROM JACQUELINE INDA KARLSEN
La Casa de la Raza’s building has stood for decades as a symbol of equity, humanity, culture, and community. For generations, it has been a place where people could find their voices, embrace their identities, and experience a sense of belonging.
More than thirty years ago, I was part of the La Casa de la Raza, Inc. organization. I helped create its first summer program, Ollin. We closed streets to celebrate our Hispanic heritage through festivals honoring Mexican Independence Day and Cinco de Mayo. I helped connect community members with young people interested in photography classes and radio programming in partnership with KCSB. Together, we created opportunities to celebrate our culture and give our youth a place to belong.
Leaving La Casa back then was difficult. However, ongoing financial mismanagement and organizational challenges eventually made it impossible for me to continue. Decades later, La Casa had entered bankruptcy proceedings for the third time. In 2020, the bankruptcy trustee closed the building and community organizers were locked out.
Some of La Casa’s original founders eventually reached out to me, asking for help reopening its doors. They believed the building needed someone willing to make it accessible to the community while negotiations with the corporation continued through bankruptcy proceedings. I initially declined and encouraged them to continue looking. Over the following months, the founders approached several community leaders, seeking someone willing to take on the enormous responsibility of rehabilitating the property and making it accessible to the public, without financial backing and without charging people to participate in its programs.
No one could or would take on that responsibility.
After nearly a year of watching the building remain closed and deteriorate, I decided to accept the challenge.
My hesitation was not without reason. I had witnessed decades of internal conflict, accusations, and organizational disputes. Time and again, people who stepped forward to lead were attacked and accused of wrongdoing and unethical management. I knew what I might be walking into. But then I saw things that changed my mind.
I saw young dancers practicing in the rain in public parking lots because they had nowhere else to go and could not afford to rent a space for practice. I watched people in need turn to the building for refuge, only to find its doors padlocked. Those images stayed with me. They weighed heavily on my heart and reminded me why spaces like La Casa are so critically important.
I made a commitment to give the founders 24 months of my time, and Tomas Castello committed to helping me through the structure and process of taking on the task. Without financial backing, we took on the rehabilitation of approximately 25,000 square feet of building space. We worked to restore floors, walls, the roof, broken windows, and doors. We repaired the kitchen and bathrooms while personally carrying the responsibility of keeping the utilities paid and the lights on. We reopened spaces for substance-use recovery and support groups, English classes, Zumba, banda rehearsals, and folklórico groups. We welcomed faith-based organizations that shared Sunday services with those seeking a light of hope in difficult times. We made room for people who simply needed somewhere to gather, practice, learn, heal, and belong.
The 24 months passed quickly. Unfortunately, the longstanding disagreements between the original founders and the La Casa corporation remained unresolved.
During this time, we also lost many of the founders I had originally returned to support. One by one, they passed away, facing the challenges of age and declining health. And, as I had witnessed happen to so many leaders before me, the rumors and accusations continued. They moved from the corporation involved in the bankruptcy proceedings, to the current owner Tomas Castello, and eventually to me and even my family following his passing. Questions surrounding management, ethics, and leadership continued to follow our efforts, but they did not stop us from helping others. Eventually, my own health began to suffer. I communicated to the ownership my intention to step away and asked them to either take command or find a replacement.
Then Donald Trump returned to office.
I could not leave.
People in our community began turning to La Casa for refuge, resources, and support. Walking away was no longer something I felt I could do. I set aside my health, personal circumstances, and even my own pride because the needs of the community felt greater than my desire to leave.
Today, after years of working to preserve La Casa and keep its name and purpose alive, the work has taken a tremendous toll on my family. Yet La Casa has remained a symbol of hope, serving people in ways that have exceeded even my original expectations. The need for La Casa has become undeniable and we kept its doors open and the name with life, as it transitioned. Its importance as a community resource is now being recognized at a level that has resulted in the State providing funds to the City of Santa Barbara for its purchase.
I welcome this as an opportunity for renewal.
It represents a chance for the City to preserve and continue work that might otherwise have disappeared and been forgotten during the seven years since the building first shuttered its doors to community services at the height of the pandemic.
I know our work has made a difference. We have seen it in the people who walked through those doors, the programs that found a home, the families who received assistance, and the hundreds of people who had nowhere else to turn.
But there is another side to this story.
Our family has paid a tremendous price.
There were times when we struggled to pay our own rent while working to keep the building’s utilities paid and its doors open for those who needed it. My adult children moved into my small rental, after over a decade of sustainable independence, in order for us to sustain the financial impacts of La Casa and manage to keep a roof over our heads. We carried financial obligations that were never meant to fall upon the shoulders of any one family, all while facing accusations and criticism from those who questioned the very work we were sacrificing to sustain. I share this because the reality of community service must include an honest conversation about who bears its costs.
Now, we stand at the threshold of a new era as we await the moment when the City of Santa Barbara takes ownership of this landmark.
Today, I received formal notice that the building will be transferred to new ownership and that we must surrender the property, vacant, by December.
With that comes a decision I never imagined having to make: relocate the work, carrying with us the debt, the burdens, and the stigma that have threatened to overshadow nearly four decades of service, or bring this chapter of our lives to an end.
For the well-being of our family, we have chosen the latter. After years of sacrifice and service to this great city, it is time to allow our family the opportunity to find peace and move forward.
We are not closing this chapter because the work is finished, because the need has disappeared, or because the people we serve matter any less. We are closing it because we can no longer carry the weight and stigma surrounding this work.
Perhaps the hardest part is knowing that the people who needed La Casa most were often those whose voices went unheard by the very institutions, organizations, and systems funded to serve them.
Yet, one of our greatest honors has been witnessing people move from crisis to resilience.
Many of those individuals heard a call for support in the last few weeks and acted in this election. Some even took time off work to stand in line, alongside their voting-age children, to cast votes in support of me.
That meant more to me than I can fully express. It reminded me that the work did make a difference and that the people we stood beside were indeed uplifted to feel that they could individually make a difference in this city.
Now, it is time for the City to step in and step up to this responsibility, as it has with the more than six community centers it owns and operates throughout the city.
I also want to be clear about this transition.
All programs and activities currently operating within the building will comply with the request to vacate. We will turn over the keys and deliver the property vacant of all belongings and personal items, as requested, within the short deadline provided.
We will do so with respect for the transition and for the opportunities new ownership may bring.
However, we hope the City will not simply transfer responsibility for this space to another nonprofit. We hope the City will truly take ownership and accept responsibility for preserving and revitalizing this building.
As we leave, we do so with important expectations for the future.
We expect the City to develop a meaningful plan to support the organizations, programs, and people who will lose their home when these doors close. That responsibility cannot simply be handed back to an already stretched nonprofit community. The City must provide the financial resources and institutional support necessary to fill the void as we comply with the required closure dates.
The need will not disappear when the keys are handed over. Our 805 Coalition partners do not currently provide long-term case management services in South County. Their work is structured primarily around the immediate trauma response when families are directly impacted by immigration enforcement and family separations. They cannot reasonably be expected to absorb the needs of the more than 300 families we currently serve on top of their existing responsibilities and limited capacity.
The families will still need assistance.
Our youth will still need somewhere to gather.
People in recovery will still need support.
Our immigrant community will still need a place of refuge.
And those who have nowhere else to turn will still need someone to answer when they knock.
I hope the City understands that purchasing a building is only the beginning. Preserving its purpose requires resources, a lasting commitment to public ownership, and a genuine willingness to serve the people who made La Casa what it is. It requires the same intention, investment, and dignity the City demonstrates in operating its other community centers.
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IN CLOSING
I have given nearly four decades of my life to helping others. Together with countless volunteers, we served a community that was too often unseen, unheard, and underserved.
I am proud that La Casa’s doors remained open through this important moment in our history. I also recognize that the years my family devoted to this building came at a personal cost, including the painful experience of seeing the reputation built through decades of positive work overshadowed by the challenges surrounding La Casa.
Above all, I am proud of the people who found refuge in our work and went on to accomplish great things. Their resilience, their growth, and their successes will always be the most meaningful part of this journey.
Now, it is time for someone else to carry this responsibility, and the City has an extraordinary opportunity to become that steward.
I ask the City to step forward and lead, as it has with its other community centers. Its management of those spaces has established a level of public trust that La Casa has struggled to regain.
The City has the experience, institutional resources, and public responsibility to help break the cycle of stigma and struggle surrounding this landmark and establish sustainable, trusted services for those who need them most.
I thank our community for trusting me as a leader for more than three decades. I am honored and humbled that families entrusted me with helping guide their children out of devastation and toward stability, opportunity, and hope.
I am especially grateful to God that members of my own family have followed in my footsteps and embraced the importance of caring for others.
La Casa’s doors may be closing under our stewardship, but its purpose must never close.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Karlsen
Community leader
Uplifting our community in unity and access to power.