Healdsburg fills key housing role, allocates funding to address homelessness

Hoping to reduce homelessness in northern Sonoma County, Healdsburg has hired a key official to shape the city’s housing policy and is deciding how it will spend $500,000 in anticipated funding from a new countywide initiative to provide shelter and services to people without a home.

The city named housing specialist Stephen Sotomayor to fill its vacant housing administrator position earlier this month. With experience in both the public and private sectors in Los Angeles and Fresno, Sotomayor will be asked to tackle the complex matter of homelessness while also spearheading development of affordable housing in the city.

In November, the City Council declared a homeless shelter crisis, allowing the city of roughly 12,000 people to become eligible for part of $12.1 million in emergency funding provided by the state to the county. Those funds are set to be finalized in late March by a new homelessness task force, known as Home Sonoma County, which is composed of city and county elected officials, as well as local housing advocates.

All put together, it’s part of Healdsburg’s plan to take a more holistic, regional approach to help solve the unwieldy challenge of homelessness.

“This is an issue that is borderless,” said Councilman Joe Naujokas. “So one of the council goals is to engage at a sub-regional level with Windsor and Cloverdale and get some sort of coordination of efforts. I believe we all shoulder some responsibility for handling that within this region.”

An annual survey identified roughly 3,000 homeless people in Sonoma County last year, including 129 in Healdsburg. To help keep those numbers in check, Healdsburg has for four years partnered financially with north county organization Reach for Home for outreach to individuals experiencing homelessness within city limits. The nonprofit, founded in 2014, manages the city’s stock of 11 transitional apartments offered to those in need of shelter on a temporary basis while they find more permanent housing.

Healdsburg expects to receive approximately $500,000 in grants from the state Homeless Emergency Aid Program, or HEAP. Once the county task force divvies up the money, Healdsburg plans to direct the money to Reach for Home and upgrade the 11 units. Washers and dryers would be moved into individual apartments, allowing the city to convert the laundry room into a “navigation center” where people in need of shelter may be connected with medical, mental health and housing services.

“We’re fortunate the city is willing to work with us as an agency,” said Colleen Carmichael, Reach for Home’s executive director. “The most success moving forward will be if the city, county and the community come together and work on this issue. It can’t be on one agency. It has to be everybody wanting to make strides.”

Separately, the nonprofit oversees a mix of 11 other short-term and permanent housing units that it owns in north county, and hopes to expand by buying another eight units with grant funding in the coming year. In addition, both Reach for Home and the city continue their work with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to offer its community hall as an emergency shelter during the winter months, and to provide showers to those who otherwise lack consistent access to facilities for hygiene.

For some, the efforts still aren’t enough.

Gail Jonas, a retired attorney and 52-year resident of Healdsburg, seeks more ways people without permanent shelter can continue to live in the city. While expanded housing for the homeless is the end goal, she has continued to advocate for the city to accommodate an official encampment on city-owned property so those experiencing homelessness can have a stable place to pitch a tent and know it won’t be removed in unannounced sweeps of the area.

She’s found two sites - one on a portion of the city’s 14-acre Corporation Yard on Westside Road and another on a 1-acre tract of land just north of the Healdsburg Community Center - as possible locations for the city to deliver toilets, handwashing stations and dumpsters for garbage. Jonas thinks it’s also a good plan for all parties involved, pointing to a state law that exempts cities from any liability when an emergency shelter is established on government property.

“There’s a huge sense of urgency here,” said Jonas. “The official plan is ‘housing first,’ but if we don’t do anything until we build more housing, these people remain in harm’s way and it’ll be a few years before there’s housing. The least we can do is establish a temporary legal encampment as a bare-bones minimum.”

To get a better sense of how the homeless population has changed in Healdsburg over the past year, Jonas and Naujokas will both participate in the next countywide homeless census, which takes place early Friday morning. Each says their goal is to use those updated figures to decide how the region’s homelessness strategy should change into the future.

“As a policymaker who cares deeply about all of my constituents, it does pain me to see the disparity, in Healdsburg in particular, of housing costs, from the multimillion-dollar homes to someone in a tent on the river,” said Naujokas. “But I don’t want to just rush something and wipe my hands, and say, ‘OK, we’ve done it, we’re walking away.’ I want to do the right thing for our homeless population.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.