Potential Guerneville sites eyed for homeless services

It was an eager crowd that gathered on a cool morning this week at the Guerneville Veterans Memorial Building for hot showers, a few days’ worth of food and other services that volunteers have provided to 50 or 60 homeless people every week here since late June.

With nighttime temperatures already in the 30s and almost three weeks to go before the seasonal shelter opens for the winter, most of those in the area had spent the night outdoors - holed up in cars, sleeping bags and, if they were lucky, tents. They welcomed something warm to drink.

“It wasn’t unbearable,” one 52-year-old man said as he readied for the day, after sleeping on a Russian River beach a block away with nothing but a couple of blankets. “But it was pretty darn cold.”

As early as a year from now, however, Sonoma County officials hope to have a place for the community’s homeless to take shelter on chilly autumn nights - as well as on the brisk mornings that follow and on every other day and night of the year.

Given the go-ahead by the Board of Supervisors earlier this month, county representatives already are in discussions with the owners of several Guerneville-area properties identified as potential sites for a year-round homeless shelter that would double as a daytime drop-in service center - providing meals, showers and a wide range of counseling, financial, housing and employment assistance.

Plans include providing about 16 permanent, supportive housing units intended to help people get off the streets for good.

The county hopes to partner with West County Health Centers for a clinic at the same location, using a $718,000 federal grant the health agency was awarded in August to serve the homeless.

The two preferred sites that have emerged from a list of 13 properties considered so far are George’s Hideaway, a shuttered restaurant, bar and hotel on Highway 116 west of Guerneville, and the Guerneville Community Church on Armstrong Woods Road, where a mental health and wellness drop-in center run by West County Community Services already exists.

Two other properties are in the running as well, both empty lots just east of town on River and Old River roads.

It’s an ambitious proposition and not inexpensive. The potential cost for acquisition, development and year-round operation is estimated between about $1 million and $1.6 million.

There are community concerns to navigate, as well. The Community Church site is adjacent to the K-8 Guerneville School, and some parents plan to fight any move to put homeless services there.

Others in the community are convinced providing a service hub in town will merely draw more homeless people. Some simply don’t believe a small, rural town with limited law enforcement and public transit is the place for such a facility.

“It’s a big pill,” local business owner Heidi Shulte said.

But the goal is to provide the consistency and support that would enable clients to connect with needed treatment and assistance so they’re no longer homeless, county officials said.

“It’s one event, one life event” that often results in someone making their home on the street, said Supervisor Efren Carrillo, who represents the area. “It could be unemployment. It could be increased rent. It could be a family event, or a health-related event.”

Though more expensive than a simple nighttime shelter, a more supportive approach has proven effective in “helping people get back on their feet and become self-sustaining,” he said.

The lower river’s homeless population long has been acknowledged as woefully underserved compared with others in Sonoma County, particularly given its high concentration and a visible downtown presence that has troubled business owners.

A point-in-time census conducted in January counted 241 homeless people in west Sonoma County - about 8 percent of the county’s overall homeless population - most living between Forestville and Monte Rio, and centered in Guerneville. The town’s total population is just 1,040.

Yet little help has been available to them beyond the winter shelter that operates at the downtown veterans building from Dec. 1 to March 31 each year. It is open only from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., when clients are forced back out on the streets.

When Sonoma County Vet Connect, a nonprofit agency that primarily serves veterans, stepped in last summer and began providing weekly showers and laundry days for the homeless, funded by its volunteers, it cast the community’s needs in sharp relief, organizers say. Though participants must register for time slots to bathe and wash their clothes, the wait provides an opportunity to rest indoors, get something to eat and connect with St. Joseph’s Health clinic workers, if necessary.

“Nothing was happening out here in west county,” said Ted Fox, a longtime Guerneville resident and retired county health outreach worker who volunteers and helps sponsor the weekly event.

That was due, in large part, to the recession and the loss of the county’s redevelopment agency, which had earmarked funding six years ago and set a task force to work to find a permanent solution. That effort was reignited in 2013 with the promise of more than $1 million in acquisition and development funds approved by county supervisors.

An ongoing community discussion about the problem has traction among those alarmed by the trash and debris that have been left along the river and local creeks, as well as in other locations. Downtown loitering concerns those who depend on tourist dollars, as does behavior some attribute to drug and alcohol abuse.

But Carrillo, like others, said distinctions have to be made between those who need and want help, and those whose issues must be dealt with another way.

“It’s a very complicated situation, and it’s not just black and white,” said retired firefighter Mark Emmett, a member of the Russian River Fire District board and community activist. “You have people that want help and need help and are willing to accept it, and you have people who just want to drink and drug.”

“I help run the winter shelter every year,” said local property broker and Russian River Chamber of Commerce President Debra Johnson, who also is vice president of the West County Health Centers board and serves on the board of West County Community Services, “and I’ve gotten to know a lot of these people and their stories. And you know, the majority of us are about two steps away from being these folks.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.