Homeless camp on Sonoma County Water Agency site to clear out next month

Organizers of the homeless encampment at the former Sonoma County Water Agency site in west Santa Rosa have agreed to take down their tents by mid-November after being promised by county officials that a more permanent location would be sought to host them.

County officials acknowledged, however, that finding that site could take months, leaving those who have participated in the protest camp facing the possibility of sleeping outdoors through what is expected to be a wet winter.

On Friday, the three members of the encampment’s governing council said they were not relying exclusively on the county and were trying to scout their own place to set up an encampment.

“We’re not sitting back waiting for them,” said Bonnie Nicol, 53, one of the encampment’s council members.

The encampment was set up in early September by organizers seeking greater action by local governments to combat and address homelessness in the county. It was named after a homeless single mother, Michela Wooldridge, who was killed in 2012 just days before she was to receive shelter space at Santa Rosa’s Sam Jones Hall.

The protest site now includes 22 homeless residents and several homeless advocates who have set up a makeshift village of 19 tents in the east parking lot of the old Water Agency operations base off West College Avenue.

The county currently is trying to sell the 7.5-acre property to a developer for the construction of housing. The property was put back on the market last week.

County officials and camp organizers say they’ve maintained a cooperative relationship. Representatives of the Water Agency and the county’s Community Development Commission say they’ve been meeting regularly with homeless organizers and advocates to find a more permanent housing solution for camp residents.

“We’re going to start a process to look at possible locations for this type of housing option,” said Jim Leddy, special projects director for the Community Development Commission. He described that search as “part of our short-term, interim measure until we can build the units to find everyone a permanent home.”

Still, even that interim step could take several months, Leddy said, so county staff are looking for other homeless housing alternatives, such as the “safe parking program” that allows people to live in their cars.

“We’ve laid out some alternatives that wouldn’t keep the camp together but would connect them with temporary shelter and other short term relief,” Leddy said.

But Camp Michela residents said Friday they won’t let the encampment be broken up and will find another site to carry on their protest.

“That would be the saddest thing if we were broken up,” said John Ruano, 56, Nicol’s husband and also a Camp Michela council member. Nicol and Ruano have been homeless for 15 months after suffering financial hardship and the loss of their mobile home at Royal Mobile Manor in Windsor.

Lorine Renee, 44, the third camp council member, said the model of self-governance at Camp Michela has given her “the best opportunity I’ve had in two and a half years of being homeless.” Renee, who said she’s trying to get her 11-year-old son, Vincent, back from county child protection services, said the camp’s “founders,” Mikeal O’Toole and Carolyn Epple, have been an inspiration to her.

“It’s given me a lot of my self respect back,” she said. “I don’t feel worthless any more. I don’t feel depressed and helpless.”

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

Epple said she hopes talks with the county will lead to a “permanent location for a sanctioned encampment, and that the encampment will be self-governed.”

But she made it clear that by Nov. 15, Camp Michela will be relocated to another, likely unauthorized site. The location of that site won’t be revealed until tents are pitched, she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.