Extended bout of freezing weather strains Sonoma County homeless services network

Repeated bouts of freezing weather across Sonoma County have strained the region’s network of homeless services, as providers, public officials and volunteers scrambled to open and operate overnight warming centers and winter shelters for the county’s unsheltered population.

Four temporary warming centers have been opened in recent weeks in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Sonoma and Sebastopol, their operations largely spearheaded by nonprofits in partnership with cities.

So far the additional sites have been able to meet demand, providers said, but the rush to set up centers and properly staff them in a short time frame has highlighted the need for a more centralized, countywide response, some homeless providers and advocates say.

West County Community Services’s year-round shelter in Guerneville has had to turn away up to five people who remain on a waitlist, said Tim Miller, the nonprofit’s executive director. They’ve expanded their overnight shelter from 27 to 31 beds and are setting up four more.

There are individuals who prefer to stay outside for a variety of reasons, Miller said, adding that a full-time outreach person has been spending the past few days across the lower Russian River handing out coats, hats, gloves and sleeping bags to anyone they can find outside.

Richard Waldie, 72, a former Placer County bus driver who’s has been homeless in Santa Rosa for the past three years, stood outside the packed warming site at Catholic Charities’s downtown Caritas Center on Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s difficult,” Waldie said. “A lot of us are still having to sleep out in the cold and a lot of people just have a blanket and nothing else. They could die out here easily.”

No exposure deaths or injuries have been reported amid the run of frigid nights and wet weather in recent weeks, according to Redcom, the county’s emergency medical dispatch center.

Still, amid an uptick in local homelessness since last year, the high demand for limited housing slots means people can be left waiting for months on the street with few available warm spaces nearby.

Waldie is one of many individuals waiting to secure a permanent housing slot through programs that include the state-funded Project Homekey, used over the past two years repurpose a half-dozen local lodging properties for homeless housing.

Many homeless individuals often choose not to go to shelters because they don’t want to depart from their belongings or go into crowded spaces, Waldie said, but they’ll frequently get kicked out of the streets or from under bridges, even when it’s raining.

“I’m dying to get off the streets or I’ll die here,” he said.

Sonoma County’s annual homeless count documented a 5% increase in Sonoma County’s overall homeless population since 2020, to an estimated 2,893 homeless residents. The count also found the number of people who were chronically unsheltered increased by 23%.

Santa Rosa has teamed up with Catholic Charities, a nonprofit, to open the largest warming center in the county at the new Caritas Center campus, opened in September off A and 6th streets.

The center has a capacity for 90 people overnight and is designed for people to come and go throughout the night, said Kelli Kuykendall, Santa Rosa’s homelessness manager.

Eric Sonway, a Santa Rosa man with disabilities, sat bundled up in a hat and coat on a bench outside the warming center Wednesday.

“There could be a couple more warming shelters but this one’s nice and I appreciate everything they’ve done here,” he said, eating a granola bar. “I try to help out and volunteer as much as I can.”

The center served between 58 and 70 people Monday through Wednesday evenings, said JennieLynn Holmes, Catholic Charities chief executive officer.

Sam Jones Hall, the largest year-round shelter in the county, also run by Catholic Charities, averaged 150 people over those same three nights, Holmes said.

Under a new policy, the city requires three consecutive days with overnight lows below 32 degrees or three nights of rain with “major or extreme risk levels” to open a temporary warming center.

But even with that policy in place and an established partner in Catholic Charities to lend support, rapid weather changes and finding enough volunteers to staff the center pose a challenge, Kukyendall said. The challenge deepens during weekends and the holiday season.

“That can be difficult, in my experience, for a city to be able to react that quickly and so we have to rely on our partners like Catholic Charities,” said Kuykendall.

Under the city’s agreement with Catholic Charities, Santa Rosa has allocated $34,000 to fund the center, said Kuykendall.

It is a familiar story for other cities in the county.

In Sebastopol, city leaders, volunteers and advocates scrambled to set up an overnight shelter for about six individuals before temperatures dropped into the 30s Wednesday night. They had tried the previous night with no luck.

“Those are six human beings that were in the cold last night,” said Sebastopol City Council member Diana Rich. “And for the community of Sebastopol, that's relevant. They’re important.”

Adrienne Lauby, board president of Sonoma Applied Village Services, a nonprofit outreach and homeless services organization, said the group provided a volunteer supervisor to assist the Sebastopol shelter overnight.

“We’re stretched in every direction,” Lauby said. “As a county and as a homeless services provider network, we are not prepared — we need to be better prepared.”

Even on Friday, center organizers send out a plea for women volunteers to fill late night and early morning shifts.

Rich said she suspects that it’s not just Sebastopol struggling, as other nonprofits and local governments seek volunteers and tap limited funding.

“There's no overall umbrella system that seems to weave it all together,” Rich said. She added she’s found it heartwarming to see the community step up to help.

In Sonoma, the county helped the city open a warming center at the Sonoma Veterans Memorial Building — but even that Dec. 1 move, announced after 7 p.m., came a day after a countywide freeze warning and following weeks of pressure from Sonoma Valley homeless advocates.

The center originally opened with 10 cots, but as of Thursday added 10 more, doubling its capacity, said Lisa Janson, a senior management analyst with the city of Sonoma.

So far the center has served between seven and 11 people, Janson said.

Sonoma County is contributing a few thousand dollars to help the city of Sonoma cover the center’s operation costs including providing maintenance, security, food and some supplies, said Chris Godley, director of Sonoma County’s Emergency Management Department.

Like other cities, Sonoma faced a time crunch to get the center off the ground.

“We didn’t have weeks to ramp up,” said Janson.

Another shelter in Santa Rosa, operated by nonprofit Social Advocates for Youth, offers help for transition-age youth, one of the county’s most vulnerable populations.

According to the county’s homeless count, there are 498 transition-age youth in the county.

The SAY shelter serves about 12 youth year-round. In light of the cold weather, the shelter expanded and is hosting an additional six individuals.

“It’s very very cold and with all the flu and other diseases going around, we worry about young people's health,” said Elizabeth Goldman, chief program officer. “It’s very traumatizing to get kicked out of your house or lose your placement this time of year.”

She said there’s capacity for six more individuals, but they will always find shelter for a young person who needs it.

As cities and nonprofits work to expand their offerings, county officials are looking for long-term answers.

The county has traditionally served as a communication hub for cities and nonprofits to share information about available shelters and their needs, said David Kiff, executive director of the county’s Community Development Commission, the chief housing agency.

But with extreme hot and cold temperatures becoming more frequent throughout the year, the county has begun exploring ways to develop a flexible and unified response, said Godley, the emergency management director.

“We expect this to become less of a once-in-a-blue-moon-kind-of-event and a more regular, consistent kind of event,” Godley said of the extreme weather.

The county is seeing longer bouts of freezing temperatures than it did last year, Kiff said. He added the pattern has added more urgency to the county’s evaluation of the current system, one strapped by limited labor and volunteers.

“We don’t have enough people in our service provider community to meet all the obligations that are needed to be met,” Kiff said.

In addition, Kiff and other county officials have long stressed the need for more supportive housing to help provide sustainable relief. The opening of the Caritas Center, a large homeless services campus, and the county’s move to transition the Guerneville shelter from seasonal to full-time have helped move the county closer to that goal.

In the meantime, Godley said his department is mapping out an extreme weather response plan for providers to use and share feedback. The ultimate goal is to then bring a revised plan to the Board of Supervisors.

“We’re collecting the data because we want to define what we’re potentially moving toward in terms of services and support,” Godley said.

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.