Santa Barbara: Women and Children First?

When a ship founders, the old maritime code leaves little room for debate: women and children first. The phrase is popularly traced to the 1852 wreck of the HMS Birkenhead, where soldiers were said to stand fast on deck so mothers and children could reach the boats. In an opinion column published Saturday in the Santa Barbara Independent, Jeff Shaffer borrows that code to ask an uncomfortable question about Santa Barbara County: if women and children really come first here, why does it look like they're treading water?

His answer sits in data most residents never see — and in a caseload that keeps growing at a local youth shelter.

The Numbers Behind the Cry

Citing figures from the county's Homeless Management Information System, Shaffer reports that in 2025 the Lompoc region alone counted 476 women experiencing homelessness — and that 200 of them were fleeing domestic violence. He writes that the numbers from 2023 through 2025 show a sharp increase over time, and that women living on the streets are among the most vulnerable in the county to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The column arrives after years of national headlines about the Epstein case awakened many Americans to the realities of exploitation and abuse, Shaffer notes. But locally, he writes, there has been little to no change in what women and children facing homelessness, violence, and exploitation actually experience day to day. In his imagery, someone already knee-deep in water is crying out, "Women first!"

Two Youths a Week at Noah's Anchorage

The column's most striking detail comes from the front line. Shaffer writes that, working with individual donors and Noah's Anchorage, his group helped bring on board a case manager to serve as a single point of contact for young people at risk. The early data is sobering: the case manager now sees, on average, two new youths each week who are at high risk of sexual exploitation or already confirmed as being exploited.

The definitions, Shaffer acknowledges, are difficult — agencies differ on how to spot the signs of grooming and on when exploitation officially begins. But the pattern underneath is consistent, he writes: young people will often leave shelter, security, and safety in search of love, purpose, and belonging. That is precisely what exploiters offer, and they are active in the community and on social media platforms today.

Shaffer, who writes that he has worked alongside the Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force for more than a decade, says government agencies, nonprofits, and law enforcement partners are all engaged with young survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. What he and his colleagues discovered, though, was a gap in prevention services and early intervention — the very gap the new case manager position is meant to start closing.

The Gaps the Cuts Leave Behind

As the water rises, in Shaffer's telling, someone screams "Children first" — straight into a headwind of bad fiscal news. Federal cuts, county cuts, city cuts. Foundations making hard choices. And a cost of living that strains ordinary Santa Barbarans, too: more for eggs, more for gas, more for health care.

"If it is truly 'women and children first,' it should not be this hard," Shaffer writes. His blunt follow-up: he knows there are people in Santa Barbara with enough wealth to write a single check that would pay for a case manager to care for local youth, or fund a year of service coordination in Lompoc to help those women find safety — and love, purpose, and belonging — again. If the public dollars are shrinking, he argues, the responsibility falls to business owners, faith communities, and community stakeholders to fill the gaps.

The People Already Building

That isn't just a rhetorical ask. Shaffer's column announces a newly convened Business Coalition — whose members include David Shiang, Aron Ashland, Randy Kohn, Travis Collins, and Shaffer himself — that supports both the coordination of services and the case manager position at Noah's Anchorage. The group is actively inviting other business owners to join.

The scaffolding extends across the community, according to the column: an Interfaith Collaborative, Students for Survivors clubs on high school campuses, and a team of Westmont students in a Fellowship Program focused on building a continuum of care for children and youth in the City of Santa Barbara. Behind it all is Kingdom Causes, the organization whose work, Shaffer writes, is "to work with everyone to help the most vulnerable in our county." Taken together, he suggests, there is a real sense that the community can, together, see the water recede.

No Rip Van Winkles Here

Shaffer frames his column around Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, who drank with strangers in the Catskills and slept through a revolution. His fear is a community doing the same — dozing through its own data, denying what is befalling neighbors in need, avoiding the hard work of plowing those fields.

The maritime code and the old fable point to the same choice. A county can sleep through the revolution in plain sight, or it can decide that the most vulnerable get to the lifeboats first. "We can do this — no Rip Van Winkles here," Shaffer writes. For the women counted in Lompoc and the youths walking into Noah's Anchorage each week, that sentence is less a closing line than a test — one this community is now, publicly, being asked to pass.