Neighbors frustrated by Santa Rosa’s inaction on large homeless camp

“Every time they swept somewhere, more and more people just went to Stony Point,” said Heather Jackson, an advocate with Sonoma County Acts of Kindness, which has volunteered meals and trash service at the camp for about the past eight months.

In turn, local cities have begun looking to new ways to help respond to encampments.

Earlier this month, Rohnert Park moved about 30 people from an encampment across from Roberts Lake to a nearby city-sanctioned tent camp on a commuter parking lot. Sebastopol, meanwhile, recently opened a controversial safe parking lot for a few dozen homeless people living in RVs near the Barlow market district.

And Santa Rosa plans to open a similar parking program for around 50 vehicles next month at a city-owned lot near the Finley Community Center.

A primary goal of all three sites is to provide drug, mental health and other services to those staying there while helping find a roof over their heads.

At the Old Stony Point camp, the city’s outreach team, run by the nonprofit Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, has ramped up visits in recent weeks to connect people with services, said Kelli Kuykendall, the city’s homeless services manager.

The city aims to offer everyone living there shelter or housing, even though the city is under no legal obligation to do so because the camp isn’t on public property, she said.

“Our interest is not for them to pick up and move to another location,” Kuykendall said.

Part of the problem, though, is the county only has shelter beds for about a third of its homeless population of around 2,700, over half of whom live in Santa Rosa. And despite the tens of millions of dollars being spent to create hundreds of units of short- and long-term supportive housing, it still won’t be anywhere near enough to meet the needs of everyone on the street.

Even when beds and rooms do become available, homeless people often turn them down for a variety of reasons — ranging from reluctance to follow curfews and other rules to concerns about safety and COVID-19 outbreaks, which have hit all of the major group shelters in the county.

“The hardest part of this is the human element,” Kuykendall said. “We’re dealing with people and their lives, both in encampments and everyone surrounding it.”

‘The same circle’

Once the camp is eventually disbanded, it’s unclear where current residents will end up next, even as the city has promised to offer all of them at least temporary shelter.

“I don't know where to go,” said Kaitlyn Carnation, a 29-year-old Sonoma County native who lives with her boyfriend in an RV at the encampment.

“If there was another place, it'd be another situation where we would keep getting kicked out in a couple of weeks — either by the city or by the owners — and it’s right back in the same circle,” she said. “And I don't want to be in this cycle. It’s draining on me.”

Carnation first moved to the Old Stony Point encampment — known as the “mud pit” to many local homeless people — last fall after she could no longer afford hotel rooms and had a falling out with her parents.

She then lost partial custody of the two children, ages 5 and 9, she has with her ex-husband, sending her spiraling into depression. That has made it difficult to find the “motivation to get out of this lifestyle” at the encampment, where she says she’s witnessed drug abuse and violence, including a sexual assault.

But Carnation and her boyfriend have made the best of their situation. Next to their RV, they’ve set up an improvised patio made of wood pallets and carpeting — complete with couches, a propane grill and a generator-powered refrigerator, which they use to serve meals to other camp residents.

Recently, Carnation, who has fallen in and out of homelessness throughout her adult life, said she has stopped using fentanyl, an extremely powerful opioid. Her boyfriend cleaned up during a stint in jail, which inspired her to seek treatment for her own drug use.

“I'm not doing it alone, and that I don't have to feel alone,” Carnation said. “And he can be there for me when I needed somebody to be there for me.”

She’s now focused on her job as an in-home caretaker with the county human services department. Her boyfriend, who did not want his name published, works in construction.

Ideally, the couple could move into temporary supportive housing, she said, so they can save up enough money for a place of their own. Carnation is on a wait list for a housing voucher and has in the past signed up for case management programs, she said, but it hasn’t been enough to find a home she can afford in Sonoma County.

“I have no problem with being a part of society,” she said. “My boyfriend and I work really hard, really hard.”

Time may be running out for the couple to leave the encampment on their own terms.

At the Feb. 9 city code enforcement hearing, officials requested the property owner be immediately ordered to take seven corrective actions, including erecting a fence around the perimeter of both lots, removing debris and hazardous material, posting no trespassing signs, and submitting an environmental report and restoration plan for the two lots and the surrounding area.

The city asked the enforcement officer overseeing the hearing to force the owner to make the changes within 14 days of his order or receive daily fines. Officials also requested the developer pay $46,972 in administrative enforcement fees.

The enforcement officer, retired Santa Rosa attorney Charles Tarr, has until late March to issue an order. During the hearing, he indicated he may give the developer longer than the two weeks requested by the city.

Code enforcement officials first notified the developer of a homeless encampment on the site in November 2018, according to city code enforcement officials. The developer failed to show up for an enforcement hearing about a year later in 2019. The city put liens on both properties, totaling about $1,800.

Around the same time in October 2019, Santa Rosa Police cleared the camp. But a new one cropped up just a few months later, city officials said.

Throughout 2020 and 2021, code enforcement staff identified additional violations. The situation finally came to a head as the camp started to grow quickly last summer and fall, triggering more notices to the property owner leading to this month’s enforcement hearing.

Cecilia Muela, assistant chief building official, said the developer had at different points over the past three years made attempts to correct the violations, but those efforts ultimately stalled.

While acknowledging the frustration of neighbors living near the camp, she said the lengthy process has been necessary to ensure “due process” and to give “the property owner first and foremost an opportunity to take care of the issues on site.”

City Councilman Eddie Alvarez said many residents in his district are running out of patience over the encampment.

“The minute that somebody complains, it tells me we’re not moving fast enough,” Alvarez said, adding he wants to see more “accountability” and “transparency” from city departments on their homelessness response.

At the same time, he said homelessness is mainly the result of larger “capitalistic” forces beyond the city’s control.

‘Lives in danger’

For Lili Flores, who lives with her family at an affordable housing development neighboring the Old Stony Point camp, one of her main complaints is that she no longer feels safe walking by Roseland Creek with her daughter and grandson.

Some in the encampment discharge sewage and wastewater from their trailers onto the ground, according to city officials and camp residents.

“It's really dirty,” she said. “It's really disgusting.”

Others at the Panas Place complex also complain of rancid smells wafting over from the camp and fires that have damaged a fence separating the apartments and the encampment, as well as the sound of gunshots. Some have installed security cameras looking out from their apartments.

“It’s all of these things that put our lives in danger, and the cops come and don’t do anything about it,” Flores said.

In July 2021, Affordable Housing Development Corp. sent a trespass letter to Santa Rosa Police, giving officers permission to arrest people who refuse to leave the properties.

But Sgt. Josh Ludtke, head of the city’s encampment enforcement team, said before taking that step, the owner must coordinate with the police department and other agencies so the property will be adequately cleaned and secured to ensure campers don’t return. Police also want to work with the city and developer to make sure all camp residents are offered shelter and services, he said.

“It’s incumbent on the property owner that they work with us to alleviate the issue, and in this case that hasn’t occurred,” Ludtke said.

“Just making arrests, it's not a good use of our city resources,” he said.

Over about the past year, there have been 15 calls for service at the properties, according to police data. All but one were related to homelessness. On Feb. 8, authorities towed two vehicles as part of a criminal investigation, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

Encampments like the one off Old Stony Point often grow in size the longer they’re allowed to continue, Ludtke said. But according to interviews with over a half-dozen local homeless people, part of the reason the camp has expanded is because officers have told people to go there as the city had no intentions to clear it.

Ludtke said he has heard similar claims from homeless people. But he maintained he was “not aware of any circumstances or any complaints, or actual sustained allegations that has occurred,” adding such actions are not in line with department policy.

Carnation, the mother who lost custody of her children, said she rarely sees outreach workers at the encampment, though she has heard more residents have been offered services as the city has turned its focus to eventually clearing the lots.

There have been fewer cars and trailers at the lots in recent weeks, she said, as residents have picked up and moved on ahead of what they see as inevitable.

Unlike many in the camp, Carnation said, she’s ready to move into housing. She wants to be able to shower before seeing her clients she cares for. And she hopes to see her children again on a regular basis, which she says means finding a lasting home.

“I don't need a lot. I just need a little bit,” she said. “I’m not asking for free rent for the rest of my life. I'm just asking for some kind of transitional housing, so I can get into a place and start living a normal life.”

You can reach Staff Writer Ethan Varian at ethan.varian@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5412. On Twitter @ethanvarian