Santa Rosa homeless encampment planning to move

Residents of a Santa Rosa homeless encampment and their advocates who were given a Nov. 15 deadline to relocate say they are still trying to find a new site.

Organizers of Camp Michela at the former Sonoma County Water Agency headquarters on West College Avenue said Sunday that they are in talks with a church that seems willing to let the camp’s homeless residents move to its property. Organizers did not want to identify the church because negotiations are ongoing.

Mikeal O’Toole and Carolyn Epple, Camp Michela co-organizers, said they had asked Water Agency officials to give them another week to find a location. Instead, they were given until Tuesday, the organizers said.

“Monday morning we’ll have to pack up and we’ll have to leave,” O’Toole said. “The only thing that might save us is if it rains Tuesday.”

The camp in the east parking lot of the Water Agency property at 2150 W. College Ave. went up on Sept. 7, set up by organizers from Homeless Action to protest what they say is local government’s inaction on homelessness issues.

The encampment was named in honor of Michela Wooldridge, a homeless single mother who was murdered just days before she was to receive a space at the Sam Jones Hall shelter in 2012. On Sunday, O’Toole said the camp contained 18 tents with about 26 people living there.

Organizers described the camp as a model for self-governing homeless encampments. It includes two portable toilets that are paid for by the county, O’Toole said.

Jim Leddy, special projects director for the county’s Community Development Commission, has been working with the camp organizers to try to identify another location. Leddy has said that a relocation site for the camp would part of a short-term, interim measure until more permanent housing can be identified.

But since merely identifying a sanctioned location could take months, county staff are looking for other housing alternatives, such as the “safe parking program” that allows people to live in their cars.

Epple said organizers have identified an interim location where they hope to relocate by Tuesday. She declined to reveal the location until the homeless residents have a chance to move and pitch their tents at the new site.

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