Sebastopol neighborhood riled by plans for shelter housing drug-addicted veterans

Residents of a rural Sebastopol neighborhood are up in arms about plans to convert an existing home in the area into transitional housing for homeless men recovering from drug and alcohol addictions - a move opponents say will alter the character of their family community and could invite convicted criminals into their midst.

The nonprofit organization behind the Robinson Road project, Community Housing Sonoma County, says its main clients are military veterans who already will have gone through treatment and be clean and sober for at least 90 days before moving in.

The seven-bedroom house at issue, though recently occupied by a single family, has a history as a residential substance-abuse treatment center for up to six women and 10 children, and still has a county permit authorizing that use. At one point, it was granted approval for 10 women and 10 children, though it never housed that many. Sometime before 2002, it was home to a small residential community of up to six adolescent boys with special needs, according to county planning documents.

Using it now for veterans who are in need of support while they get back on their feet after facing addictions would aid a vastly underserved population, CHSC representatives said. The project would serve 12 men, who would be supervised round-the-clock by what the agency calls a “key resident” and an on-site manager. Residents could stay up to two years.

“I’m sensitive that it may be difficult for some in the neighborhood to accept it,” said Santa Rosa attorney Lisa Yoshida, chairwoman of the nonprofit’s board. “But you know, this is important housing that needs to find a place in our community.”

Sale of the property is pending and the close of escrow imminent.

Neighbors organized as Friends of Robinson Road say the facility simply isn’t a good fit for their quiet, rural neighborhood just off the western edge of Sebastopol.

Though the dead-end road includes St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, which hosts a food pantry several days a week, and the Two Acre Wood Co-housing community, it has mostly larger, widely spaced, single-family homes, many of them housing families with young children, neighborhood organizers say. A rough count suggests it is home to 17 girls under the age of 18, they say.

Two of them live right next door with their parents in a home that shares the steep and rutted gravel driveway up from the main road to the structure CHSC is buying.

Rod Calkum, who, with his wife, Tasha Krongard, bought the house when the neighboring building was still being used for substance abuse treatment, told county supervisors last week that the new project represents “a life-altering catastrophe” for his family.

They and many others, organized as Friends of Robinson Road, say they could live with the project if it did not involve so many peopl, if the men were women instead, or even if there were guarantees that no one with a criminal history would be admitted.

Instead - in a debate that has become infused with anger, mistrust and suspicion - they say CHSC may have a legal right to introduce up to 14 troubled men into their tranquil environment, but it is wrong to do so.

“Fourteen of anybody is just too much,” Krongard said. “Whether they’re criminal or not, it has a huge impact.”

Residents also say the location is too isolated from services for it to work as transitional housing and say a large marijuana operation right behind it could prove tempting to recovering addicts.

Neighborhood opposition was sparked by an early proposal to use the building as transitional housing for men just exiting the criminal justice system - a prospect that still haunts neighbors.

Paula Cook, executive director of Community Housing, said in an email that her agency initially intended to allocate half of the project beds to men just freed from incarceration under county contract - a plan that was abandoned in deference to neighborhood objections.

The intention now is to serve men transitioning from substance abuse treatment with a preference for veterans, though reliance on federal funds not specifically earmarked for veterans means the agency can’t outright rule out non-veterans, according to Cook.

She and Yoshida said they need the ability to house 14 people in order to make the project feasible financially.

The facility will have a firm zero-tolerance approach to drug or alcohol use among residents, Cook said.

She said it’s possible some of those enrolled ?will have criminal histories but said their suitability for the program will be ?determined through rigorous interviews. The agency has committed to banning any sex offenders, Cook said.

Cook said violent offenders also would be excluded from enrollment, though rare exceptions might ?be granted in cases where candidates have demonstrated a “significant ?track record” of rehabilitation.

Neighbors say that potential scares them. And some have grown to distrust Cook in the wake of exchanges that have left all sides smarting, beginning with a tense June 18 neighborhood meeting in which Cook was verbally battered by angry residents, several observers said.

Communication between the parties has ground to a halt since then, capped by an Aug. 17 letter from Cook in which she described some neighbors at the June meeting as “extremely hostile and uncivil” and said she believes further “direct engagement with the neighborhood is counterproductive and detrimental.”

She chastised neighbors who voiced the objections with the federal Housing and Urban Development department, even though neighbors said the first notice they received of the project came from HUD seeking input.

Many neighbors, like Jamie Malone, who has four children of her own under age 9 and runs a daycare in her home, said at this point she doubts Cook’s commitment to housing veterans, since the only written document she has is a county staff report from early May citing its proposed use for criminal probationers.

“She’s never been transparent about who’s going in there,” Malone said.

Since 2009, Cook has served as a Sonoma County planning commissioner, representing Supervisor Shirlee Zane’s 3rd District, taking in most of central Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park

Neighbors on Tuesday presented the Board of Supervisors with a petition signed by 64 opponents seeking a moratorium on the project, for which the board in May approved a $500,000 housing loan through their role as directors of the county’s Community Development Commission.

But 5th District Supervisor Efren Carrillo, who represents the west county, said there are no land-use decisions for the county to rescind and no grounds for the county to act. He also touted CHSC’s more than 20-year history of providing supportive, affordable housing to some of Sonoma County’s most vulnerable residents.

Carrillo was scheduled to meet with neighbors ?in September, and he said he’s still willing to do ?so even though the property sale will be a done deal by then.

“If there’s anything we can modify or work on, I’m certainly willing to work on that,” he said.