Close to Home: Inaction on homelessness is ‘Sonoma Shame’

Sonoma County's homeless people have been dealt a double-whammy in the past few weeks by dangerously smoky air and the sudden drop of nighttime temperatures to near freezing. Every night, some 2,000 individuals are sleeping on our streets, says Sheriff-elect Mark Essick.

It's more than sad that fervent pleas in the past several months by Homeless Action and other advocates to act quickly to protect people from the winter cold and rains have fallen on deaf ears at the city and county. Concurrently, a series of official findings have shown without a doubt that the city and county's homeless policies are not only inadequate but contributing to the worsening situation.

The most recent of these came at the Santa Rosa City Council's Nov. 13 meeting, when Bob Aaronson, the independent police auditor, gave his second annual report. Aaronson gave the Police Department good grades on most critical issues but spoke candidly about the failure of the city's homeless policy to alleviate the situation.

With respect to the city's relentless sweeps of encampments comprising people who have no legal place to go, Aaronson said that “officers have a hard time knowing that they are only ‘turfing' the problem, pushing it around from one location to another and that, in the process of doing so, that they may be creating additional suffering in the homeless community. This work, in addition to changing nothing for the disadvantaged, has only damaged officer morale.”

In addition, the question of violations of international human rights standards for those experiencing homelessness has been raised by three important bodies.

On Oct. 20, the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights announced that it had passed a resolution, based on Article 25 of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the U.N.'s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, declaring that local governments have been carrying out “aggressive action in eliminating unsanctioned encampments without providing short or long term housing options for all residents without shelter and thus falling short of their obligation to honor the human rights of all residents.”

Such actions “effectively criminalize homelessness,” said Human Rights Commission Chairman Kevin Jones, adding that such criminalization contravenes the U.N. Committee of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and constitutes “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in violation of U.N. Article 9.

The Sonoma County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union confirmed such violations, which were originally presented in a detailed report to the Human Rights Commission by Homeless Action on June 26. The ACLU supported the resolution and called for an immediate amnesty from arrest for people camping in public spaces and creation “with all due haste” of safe-haven villages of tiny homes with security, hygiene and sanitation facilities, trash collection, case management and wraparound services “as the logical continuum of the Housing First model” embraced by the county and the city.

In September, U.N. Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha decried homeless conditions in the Bay Area. “Denying access to water, sanitation and health services and other basic necessities … constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment and is a violation of multiple human rights, including the rights to life, housing, health and water and sanitation,” Farha wrote. “Such punitive policies must be prohibited in law and immediately ceased,” she added.

In Santa Rosa, Homeless Action has provided portable toilets to encampments on numerous occasions only to find that they were removed by authorities within 24 hours.

People of good conscience: Is it not time for you to stand up and reassert boldly what Sonoma Strong really means? For without your support, there's good reason to fear that the crisis here is quickly sliding into Sonoma Shame.

Kathleen Finigan is an activist and member of Homeless Action. She lives in Santa Rosa.

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