Sonoma's Haven shelter provides an overnight home for the valley's homeless

Fran Blaye recalls the four simple words that offered hope and saved her from another night of sleeping in her minivan.

“You have a bed.”

Blaye, 63, was in a skilled nursing facility recovering from hip replacement surgery when Jeff Severson, the manager of Sonoma’s only homeless shelter, stopped by to personally deliver the good news.

“It was lovely,” said Blaye, grateful for the warm bed, nutritious food and welcome compassion provided by Sonoma Overnight Support, a nonprofit organization that operates meal programs for the hungry and runs The Haven, a 10-bed shelter located a few blocks north of the Sonoma Plaza.

“Oh my god, it was such a relief, and it actually did motivate me to work harder and get better,” said Blaye, a Sonoma Valley resident for nearly 20 years.

The cozy three-bedroom, two-bathroom manufactured home provides shelter for up to six months, with 22 families and 35 individuals currently on the wait list, many of them elderly.

Blaye is among an estimated 200 to 300 people in Sonoma Valley who are homeless, numbers gathered during an annual count around encampments throughout the area. SOS officials believe the numbers are even higher, based on the people who utilize their drop-in services at The Haven.

“I talk to people who can’t believe there are homeless in Sonoma Valley,” said Kathy King, 67, the nonprofit’s executive director. “Part of our effort is to make people aware.”

Many live “in the hills, under the bridges, couch surfing or sleeping in their cars,” she said. “They don’t all want to be at the shelter.”

Many, like Blaye, become homeless after losing their jobs. Others can’t afford rent increases and are unable to find affordable housing or come up with deposits of first and last months’ rent when circumstances force them to move.

A smaller percentage suffer from drug or alcohol abuse or mental illness.

“And then there’s the shortage of housing,” said Cindy Vrooman, 67, president of the SOS board of directors.

Blaye lost her double-wide mobile home to foreclosure after the local architectural firm she worked for as a secretary was forced to downsize during the economic downturn. After staying here and there for a few weeks with friends and family, Blaye ended up sleeping in her minivan.

She arrived at The Haven in late June and hopes to stretch her monthly $1,225 Social Security income by sharing a rental with a woman also hoping to transition from the shelter.

Debbie and Dan Kahn and their 16-year-old son also hope to find a place of their own. They arrived at The Haven in April, defeated after a series of personal setbacks that landed them without a home.

The longtime Petaluma residents first endured a reduction of hours - and pay - at Debbie’s clerical job with the County of Marin. Debbie, 45, later suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with life-threatening heart disease and an inoperable blood clot in her heart. She is now on permanent disability, unable to work.

Dan, 46, had been a stay-at-home dad and, with a 15-year gap in his resume, was unable to find employment. The family rented space for a year at a friend’s home in Redding where, they discovered, rentals are cheaper but jobs are fewer.

“We considered Sonoma County our home, and we thought if we had to be homeless somewhere, we may as well be homeless here,” Debbie Kahn said.

With encouragement from staff at The Haven, Dan Kahn attended a culinary program, found a full-time job at a nearby café and is attending Santa Rosa Junior College. Debbie Kahn’s health has stabilized, and the family is cautiously optimistic about their future.

They credit SOS with providing their family with security, shelter and both practical and emotional support at a critical time in their lives.

“They’re there. You need to do the footwork, but they encourage you. It gives you more self-esteem,” Dan Kahn said. “You come in feeling just so low.”

To assist people like Blaye and the Kahns, SOS relies on fundraising and a dozen community partnerships to cover 70 percent of the annual operating budget of $263,000. Remaining funding comes from the county and the City of Sonoma.

Simply raising awareness about homelessness in the historic Wine Country tourist town is challenging in itself.

“It’s a painful thing to acknowledge that in your community - and it’s a lovely community - that at night when we’re pouring our wine, there are people who are sleeping outdoors,” Vrooman said. “They have no place to go.”

Established in the late 1990s by various church and synagogue volunteers concerned about homelessness and hunger in Sonoma Valley, SOS became a nonprofit in 2003 and provided overnight shelter in local motels, churches and private locations. In 2007, it opened The Haven, last year providing shelter to 67 low-income men, women and families.

“We’ve expanded because of the need,” King said.

As the need continues to grow, every effort is made to find housing and return people to self-sufficiency. SOS has two beds available for emergencies and also provides motel vouchers.

A $15,000 grant from the philanthropic Impact100 Sonoma helped SOS expand services last year to include an outreach drop-in program at The Haven, where nonresident homeless can take showers, do laundry, use a computer or telephone, eat a meal, find counseling and referrals, get a bus pass, use an address to receive mail and escape inclement weather. More than 340 people dropped in last year, utilizing 4,911 different services.

By collaborating with FISH (Friends in Sonoma Helping), SOS also provides a severe weather shelter program with a large, heated tent at The Haven, and emergency shelter and food at local churches and congregations.

King and Vrooman said some 50 core volunteers from the long-established Brown Baggers program provide food and compassion for SOS clients as well as the many low-income seniors, families and veterans who stretch their fixed incomes by dining at two weekly soup kitchens.

Under the guidance of longtime volunteer and SOS board member Elizabeth Kemp, the Brown Baggers program teamed up with SOS in 2005 to provide hundreds of burrito and sandwich lunches each week that are dropped off to the hungry across Sonoma Valley.

The agency’s next goal is to add supportive housing for women and children, possibly starting with even a few designated motel rooms.

Since its start with concerned citizens like the late Adele Harrison, for whom a local middle school is named, SOS has always kept the individual person in mind.

“It gives them dignity, and it gives them some help,” King said. “Dignity and compassion are at the core of what we do.”

Contact Sonoma Valley Towns Correspondent Dianne Reber Hart at SonomaTowns@gmail.com.