Judge grants temporary order halting Joe Rodota Trail encampment sweep

A U.S. District Court judge has granted a temporary restraining order blocking Sonoma County and Santa Rosa from clearing an encampment along the city’s Joe Rodota Trail.

The order came Monday afternoon, hours after seven homeless individuals camping on the trail requested the order in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. They accused the county of planning an eviction without providing sufficient shelter options as federal law requires.

“On July 22nd, without offers of shelter and without genuine offers of property storage, a squadron of Sonoma County Regional Park Rangers flooded our modest encampment on the Joe Rodota trail threatening to arrest (us) on July 26th if we did not move,” the complaint said.

Sonoma County Regional Park rangers delivered notices to individuals camping on the trail on Friday, giving them until 8 a.m. Tuesday to vacate or risk citation or arrest.

In granting the order, Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. questioned why the residents waited until Monday to file the request when they were notified “several days ago,” but granted the order because of the looming Tuesday morning deadline.

“Nevertheless, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have clearly shown that immediate and irreparable injury — specifically the removal of Plaintiffs and their belongings from the place they are now living — will occur before the Defendants can be heard in opposition,” Gilliam wrote in his decision.

News of the order reached one of the individuals who filed the complaint, Mercedes Juanita Flores, via her cousin who was also camping on the trail.

“When I heard that, I felt really good to be heard,” Flores said.

Flores said she joined the effort to request the order to support for those living on the trail.

The individuals on the complaint are representing themselves in court.

A hearing has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday in Oakland, and Flores said she plans to be there.

The county plans to contest the order at the hearing, said county Communications Manager Paul Gullixson.

“We do not believe their representations of the facts of what happened in our efforts to relocate the individuals, are accurate,” Gullixson said.

Around 1 p.m. Monday, just 55 minutes before Gilliam granted the order, employees from the county and one of its homeless service contractors, DEMA, were offering campus residents temporary housing.

A month’s stay at the DEMA-managed trailers by the Sonoma County Fairgrounds or at the Hampton Inn in Rohnert Park were one option. Sam Jones, the congregate living shelter unpopular with many unhoused residents, was another.

Others in the encampment have said they feared their belongings would be damaged, lost or discarded if they went into a shelter. Some had concerns about the noise and security in congregant housing, while others complained that the rules in congregant housing were too restrictive.

People staying along the trail said the outreach had begun in earnest Monday and social workers had not visited the encampment on Saturday or Sunday.

Two weeks earlier, county officials closed the trail between Stony Point Road and Dutton Avenue, citing public safety concerns and a lack of vacant shelter spaces.

Since then, some residents in shelters have moved to longer term housing, said county Communications Specialist Gilbert Martinez.

“Everyone at the trail we can accommodate at one of the multiple sites being offered,” Martinez said.

Martinez said there were between 30 and 35 individuals camping on the trail, according to a count taken on Friday.

The county will not enforce its Tuesday morning deadline in light of the restraining order, but the county will have employees out on the trail Tuesday to help relocate anyone who wants to move, Gullixson said.

“I believe there are still some who had expressed an interest in relocating to one of the sites we had talked about,” Gullixson said. “If they desire to do so, we’ll move ahead to do so.”

On Friday between six and eight people agreed to relocate, Gullixson said. He did not know if that number increased Monday.

One person who joined the request to the judge for a restraining order, Tim Rucker, had agreed Monday morning to move into a vacant space at Los Guilicos, a transitional housing site with capacity for 60 people that is managed by nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul. Rucker had been speaking to county officials about the move for a month, he said.

Rucker has been living at various places along the Joe Rodota trail for over a year, he said, ever since city police cleared an encampment on nearby Robert’s Avenue.

“I feel I got skipped over,” for housing at the time, Rucker said.

The Roberts Avenue encampment was the site of tragedy in March, 2021, when Kelly Jones, a longtime and beloved member of the Santa Rosa homeless community, was killed by a man who drove his car into the camp. At the time, advocates and homeless residents accused city and county officials of increasingly pushing people into more dangerous, marginal areas along roadways as they cleared camps from parks and along the Joe Rodota Trail.

Richard Thomas watched Rucker pack his belongings. Thomas said he would take a spot at the Hampton Inn, he said, and had been told by a county official he could get a ride there later that day.

Thomas did not want to move into a trailer where he had a roommate, he said. He was trying to stay away from drugs and could not be sure his roommate would be invested in the same goal.

Both men described Joe Rodota Trail as “the main drag” for the area’s unhoused and said it was unlikely to stay tent free for long no matter what officials did.

Down the trail a man named Leland, who declined to give his last name, said he would not accept any of the shelter offers. “I have a problem with enclosed areas and big groups,” he said.

Flores on Monday accepted a voucher for a motel.

“I’m very shocked that this happened so fast, after wanting all this time to get some place to go,” Flores said. “I finally got a shower, a bed to lay in. I was very grateful, that’s for sure, and very surprised that I’m even in here resting and clean.”

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