Injunction limiting crackdown on Sonoma County homeless camps set to be extended

A federal judge’s order limiting sweeps of homeless encampments in Santa Rosa is set to be extended through 2020 and may be updated both to account for the coronavirus pandemic and address ongoing disagreements about enforcement by local authorities.

Attorneys for the city and Sonoma County on one side and homeless advocates on the other appeared Wednesday via Zoom before U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria for a hearing that laid the groundwork for an extension.

Attorneys representing homeless people and their advocates had already proposed a six-month extension, and Chhabria indicated he would favor such a move, which needs approval from the City Council and Board of Supervisors.

“I would like to urge the lawyers and their clients - you know, the mayor, the City Council, the members of the Board of Supervisors, and the plaintiffs - to give serious consideration to extending the injunction a certain period, perhaps six months, something like that, so that we really can use it in a meaningful way to develop a sense of whether something like this can work in the long term,” Chhabria said.

More detailed discussions are to come about some points of contention related to the application and potential amendment of the injunction. One ongoing dispute involving verbal orders from police to homeless people has yet to be resolved, while a legal skirmish related to the ownership of a cat and its bearing on homeless shelter appears to have fizzled out.

The current injunction, set to expire June 30, is the result of an agreement last summer involving Santa Rosa, Sonoma County and homeless advocates that requires authorities to meet certain shelter and housing needs before acting to disband unsanctioned encampments on public property. Local officials have to offer reasonable access to shelter and property storage, among other provisions, before they can break up such camps within city limits.

The order was in place as the massive Joe Rodota Trail encampment in west Santa Rosa grew last year to include up to 250 people. It also governed the dismantling of that camp in late January, when about 60% of camp residents were placed into shelter or housing while others dispersed into the city and beyond.

And the injunction’s influence is poised to grow if it continues to govern the steps authorities must take to clear homeless camps on public land, including park space like the county’s Joe Rodota Trail.

Homeless advocates have secured similar safeguards in other cities and regions across the U.S., including in Boise, where a lawsuit hailed as a success by homeless advocates overturned a local anti-camping ordinance. The Idaho city appealed the ruling as far as it could, but the U.S. Supreme Court in December declined to take up the case.

The local case began in early 2018, when advocates tried to block the clearing of a homeless encampment on county land behind the Dollar Tree store on Sebastopol Road in Roseland. A judge ultimately allowed that disbandment to proceed, but the case continued in court and resulted in the legal order last summer.

The future of the injunction beyond 2020 is less clear. Alicia Roman, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance representing homeless clients, noted that some injunctions can be in place for years.

“If I had it my way, I’d want the injunction to last until there are no more homeless on the streets,” Roman said.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Santa Rosa officials, citing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, decided in March not to break up homeless encampments to avoid spreading COVID-19. The policy has allowed new camps and clusters of vehicles used as living quarters to gather in underpasses and around parks that remain closed to the public. Outside of one, Doyle Park, officers have issued written warnings for occupants of cars parked illegally on Doyle Park Road leading to the park entrance.

Beyond the enforcement issues raised by the coronavirus, other points of disagreement that could be resolved in upcoming settlement meetings include whether a police officer’s verbal order to move counts as enforcement action and how city officials respond to requests for reasonable shelter-related accommodations, Roman said.

Rob Jackson, an assistant city attorney for Santa Rosa, noted that a hearing had been set on whether an order to relocate rose to the level of an enforcement action.

“But that hearing was dropped given the obstacles to live testimony with the onset of the pandemic and the closure of the courthouse,” he said.

Attorneys who brought the suit claim that police officers’ verbal orders to move should count as an effort to close or move homeless encampments and should trigger limits on law enforcement in the injunction. The city’s stance is that a verbal order to move is a preenforcement step, like when a speeding driver is given a warning without being arrested or formally cited.

“The attorneys are continuing to discuss it, but a resolution of that issue has not yet been reached,” Jackson said in an email.

A more curious question that arose involved a homeless woman and her cat who were found camping illegally in a public park. She was arrested after refusing placement in Samuel L. Jones Hall, the large homeless shelter owned by Santa Rosa and run by Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, which does not allow cats.

In the woman’s eyes, the cat was an emotional support animal and an offer to stay in Sam Jones was not an adequate offer of shelter under the terms of the injunction.

A “shelter placement that would require someone to abandon their service animal, emotional support animal, or pet is not adequate,” lawyers on her side wrote in a March filing, “just as a shelter placement that would be contrary to a person’s religious and ethical convictions or to accept a single gender placement that is contrary to their gender identity would not be adequate.”

Santa Rosa, in its response, said the court risked undermining the entire shelter system should it side with the woman, who city attorneys said was to blame for “a pattern of noncooperation.”

“‘Were the Court to create a bright line rule that anyone with a cat is exempt from enforcement, word will spread quickly throughout the homeless population,” city attorneys wrote. “Individuals will attempt to ‘game the system’ by playing ‘the cat card’ and, for no other reason than to prevent enforcement, simply say they own a cat.”

The issue did not resurface in Wednesday’s call. Roman, the attorney for homeless clients, said Thursday the incident did not appear to be a systemic issue. Jackson noted that Chhabria had told attorneys in the case “that he did not view that as an issue requiring his attention or a hearing.”

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.