Santa Rosa to take a hard look at its homelessness strategy

The Santa Rosa City Council scrapped its three-member homelessness subcommittee Tuesday in favor of the full council taking a “deeper dive” on strategies to guide more people out of homelessness and into permanent housing.

The move followed a discussion that Mayor Chris Coursey called a “reset” of the council’s homeless strategy, one he felt was needed as a result of mixed messages about whether the city would focus on expanding the number of shelter beds or helping more people move out of shelters and into housing.

“I’m not sure that we’ve all been on the same page about the way forward,” Coursey said.

The year-old subcommittee chaired by Councilman Ernesto Olivares had made a few recommendations that the full council accepted, but there has been some question about the effectiveness of those policies.

The council declared, upon the subcommittee’s recommendation, a homeless emergency in August, which loosened some land-use guidelines and allowed the city to seek financial assistance from the state.

The declaration has not resulted in any new funding. The program the declaration aimed to expedite, the Community Housing Assistance Program, has not resulted in many community groups stepping forward to make their properties available for housing sites, as the city had hoped.

Councilwoman Julie Combs, who along with Tom Schwedhelm rounded out the committee, called their work “excellent first steps,” but acknowledged the CHAP program hasn’t been successful in generating wide community support.

“We got out of the way of folks in the community that wanted to provide housing,” Combs said. “I think we were a little stunned that there wasn’t more.”

To date, only a single group, the First United Methodist Church, has met the requirements of the program, but it has held off moving forward over neighborhood opposition to plans for a 20-person camp at its Stony Point Road campus.

Combs said she had been frustrated that she wasn’t able to convince her fellow committee members to support more ideas that would have helped homeless people get through the wet winter months.

Schwedhelm and Olivares both agreed that the subcommittee’s work, while not completed, was important enough that the full council should embrace it.

“I think it has served its course,” Schwedhelm said. “This is a complex social issue that more than just three of us, I think, should be hearing that information to make decisions.”

Several council members, however, defended the decision to declare a homelessness emergency, one that continues to stand.

They noted that under the expedited land-use rules that allowed owners of commercial properties to offer homeless services, Social Advocates for Youth had operated a winter shelter program for at-risk youth in the vacant first floor of The Press Democrat building on Mendocino Avenue.

While council members pointed to their accomplishments, others pointed to the city’s shortcomings.

Mikeal O’Toole, a member of a homeless encampment in Roseland, expressed frustration that the city hadn’t done more.

He noted that since he spoke to the council last, another homeless person, Olian Bryd, a 62-year-old chronically homeless man known to many, had died of exposure.

“How many times do I have to come here to say another person died before somebody does something!” O’Toole said. “Things have not changed. People are dying still!”

Several members of the Congregation Shomrei Torah on Bennett Valley Road urged the council to take action about the large encampment on public property - “Homeless Hill” - adjacent to their synagogue.

Rabbi George Gittleman said the city had effectively created a “defacto encampment” on the property “without taking any responsibility for its existence.”

He and other members of the congregation cited thefts, people stealing power and water, deplorable sanitation issues, and recently an unfriendly pit bull belonging to a homeless person wandering on their property.

“What we’re saying is the status quo has to end. No more Wild West,” Gittleman said.

Schwedhelm and Combs pressed City Manager Sean McGlynn about taking steps to address safety and sanitation problems on the property, but he said further discussion would need to happen before such actions could take place.

McGlynn said the city was aware of the situation, had been proactively managing it for some time, but had not gone so far as “declaring it off limits.”

He noted that other communities have taken such action with respect to specific encampments and the council could take that action if it chose.

Coursey said he envisioned four or five special meetings on homelessness, held on days other than regular council meetings.

“I do believe the council needs to take a deeper dive here,” Coursey said.

Topics could include issues such as expanding shelter beds, funding new staff to intervene and prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place and working closely with other government agencies like the county to coordinate policies or apply for grants.

“I think it’s key to this process that we have all of our partners included in it,” Coursey said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.