Homeless camp protesters issue demands for housing, services in Sonoma County

The political stand-turned-homeless-encampment on government-owned property in west Santa Rosa has grown in strength and size this week, with residents issuing a set of demands for bolstered services countywide as authorities search for a way to defuse the protest and relocate people who have set up tents on the site.

Led by advocates, homeless people on Monday set up camp in a vacant parking lot on the grounds of the former Sonoma County Water Agency maintenance facility on West College Avenue. Law enforcement agencies, elected officials and Water Agency staff so far have declined to enforce trespassing laws and local ordinances that prohibit camping on public property.

Brad Sherwood, a spokesman for the Water Agency, said officials still are carefully considering their response, and county officials are negotiating with the group to potentially relocate the camp.

“The Water Agency has no immediate plans to move the homeless advocates,” Sherwood said. “The Water Agency is allowing the county to continue dialogue with the advocates.”

By Friday, “Camp Michela” - named after Michela Wooldridge, a 24-year-old homeless woman who was stabbed to death three years ago in Santa Rosa while waiting for a shelter bed - had nearly twice as many homeless people as were there Monday, including 16 residents and up to 15 tents.

“We’ve been homeless for two years, and we just moved in,” said John Ruano, 53, who was with his wife, Bonnie Nicol-Ruano, 56. “We haven’t felt this safe in years.”

The protest, organized by a locally based group called Homeless Action, is aimed at highlighting laws that advocates said criminalize homelessness. It is also meant to pressure government leaders to devote more resources to address homelessness in the county.

“We’re frustrated,” said Carolyn Epple, a Homeless Action organizer. “What our government spends on homeless services is far too little. Homeless people deserve the same thing as every other human being - a place that’s safe and clean and respected.”

The group issued a set of demands to county officials, who visited the site Friday morning.

The demands include a government-sanctioned site for up to 30 homeless people to camp for as long as they’d like, permission and assistance from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors as well as the Santa Rosa City Council to recreate similar encampments in other areas within the next four months, and rescinding local laws that prohibit camping on public lands.

“We also need help with Port-a-Potties, potable water, dumpsters and electrical hookups,” Epple said. “And we’d prefer to have someplace paved for when it rains.”

Friday’s visit marked the second time this week county officials have met with Homeless Action organizers.

“Our main goal was to let them know that we have resources we’re funding that are available to them,” said Kathleen Kane, executive director of the county’s Community Development Commission. “We want to connect them with those services. We don’t know to what extent we can house people, but that is our goal,” she said.

This year’s homeless count identified 3,107 people in Sonoma County who are homeless on a given night, down 27 percent over the past two years. The county has identified the immediate need for 2,200 housing units to get people off the streets, in part, because emergency shelters are at capacity.

Epple said she and organizers with Homeless Action triggered their protest plans following an Aug. 6 memo from the U.S. Department of Justice, which contended that laws preventing homeless people from sleeping in public when there is not enough shelter space to meet the need violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.

The memo stemmed from an Idaho court case in which the federal government sided with plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of Boise who were convicted under laws there that criminalize sleeping or camping in public.

“Making it a crime for people who are homeless to sleep in public spaces when there is insufficient shelter space in a city unconstitutionally punishes them for being homeless,” Department of Justice officials said in a written statement.

Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo, whose district includes the Santa Rosa encampment, said he is considering offering the group an alternative location to set up camp, an option which Epple said she would consider.

County officials are eager to clear the encampment from the property so they can sell it to a developer. It went on the market last week and is zoned for high-density housing, of which at least 15 percent must be affordable.

Meanwhile, Epple said, another wave of homeless people are seeking to move in to the camp.

“They’re waiting down the road at the Finley Center to see if we get cleared,” she said. “But so far, the county is willing to negotiate with us.”

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ahartreports.