Questions hang over Sonoma County’s new, official homeless site amid latest push to clear troubled trail

“I’m very dismayed by the amount of money that’s been spent on temporary fixes that don’t seem to lead to permanent solutions,” said Jackson, who emphasized the need to find more permanent housing solutions.

She and other homeless advocates see the emergency shelter — the county’s first outdoor managed homeless camp — as simply the latest Band-Aid for a persistent humanitarian wound that local officials have been unable to heal.

County officials said their top goal at the new emergency shelter is to provide residents the support they need to overcome the often difficult circumstances that have led to homelessness. That includes case management, enrollment in such social services programs as Medi-Cal and CalFresh, housing assistance and job training, and mental health and substance-use counseling.

In an email Friday, Tina Rivera, the county’s health services director who oversees the homelessness division, said the latest crisis declaration, and previous ones, helped add extra beds and speed efforts to address health and safety concerns on the trail and surrounding neighborhoods.

Waiting any longer would end up costing the county more money, Rivera said.

“There is a need for additional capacity as well as a need to have the ability to offer shelter to the individuals moving from the city onto the Joe Rodota Trail,” she said in the email to The Press Democrat.

“We cannot do one without the other … The objective is to achieve stability, improve health, reduce harmful behaviors, and increase income.”

Supervisors gave the new managed camp an initial $3 million budget to be operated by DEMA Consulting and Management, a company that ran many of the county’s emergency and transitional housing sites during the pandemic.

That cost is likely to grow, officials acknowledge.

“The board has no expectation that costs won’t exceed” $3 million, said County Counsel Robert Pittman.

The money is paying for a long list of goods and programs at the site, from daily meals to electricity, garbage service and pest control.

Sonoma County Managed Camp budget.pdf

‘No picnic’ on the trail

Law, 73, and his wife have been homeless for 2 1/2 years.

Their time on the Joe Rodota Trail was “no picnic,” he said.

At one point during the recent storms, they woke up in their tent “under three inches of water.”

They moved into the county site with their 14-year-old rat terrier, Killer.

“It’s been great,” Law said standing outside his tent on Wednesday.

Homeless camps along the Joe Rodota Trail leading between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol have been an especially recurrent and vexing problem over the past decade.

Just in February, the county closed and cleared a group of about 50 campers along the paved bicycle and pedestrian path only to have another one pop up on a different stretch.

That new camp, which peaked at nearly 90 tents between Brittain Lane and Stony Point Road by the time it was cleared, prompted the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 21 to declare a shelter crisis and authorize establishment of the new outdoor site with its initial budget.

The declaration allowed the county to bypass the public bidding process typically required of government contracts and enter into a no-bid contract with DEMA and other service providers, even before the exact terms of the partnership could be established.

County officials were unable to provide The Press Democrat with the DEMA contract because they said it has not been finalized.

“This is consistent with how we do a lot of contracts with emergency operations centers,” said Pittman, the county’s top attorney.

He added the county has used a similar approach during wildfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic when the county set up emergency housing sites for hundreds of unhoused people.

“The priority, the direction that was given to staff, was to get this thing done as soon as possible,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, whose Santa Rosa-centered district includes the affected part of the Joe Rodota Trail.

The county expects anywhere from 70 to 100 individuals to move into the managed camp. Others on the trail have set up beyond the closed stretch or dispersed to new areas.

Gaining entry

Inside the camp, residents were better sheltered from the rain than they were on the Joe Rodota trail. Their large new tents had high ceilings and were on platforms, raised several inches above the wet parking lot.

But admitting many of those displaced from the trail and others seeking shelter at the site has not always gone smoothly.

One male resident, who asked that his name not be used to protect his privacy, said he and his wife were living together on the trail when it was cleared March 23.

The man, who is in his mid-30s, said he had filled out all the required county paperwork and was told his background check was pending. He said they accepted his wife but not him. He then spent several nights in the rain, sleeping in a nearby bank alcove next to a drive-thru ATM.

“I was out here last night, over in this area,” he said Tuesday.

“They told her to bring me in (this morning) and that they would fast-track me so I could be with her. And now, I have to do the ‘Coordinated Entry’ all over again … it's all the paperwork they have you fill out before you can get in somewhere, and I've already done that like six times.”

Corrine Thompson, DEMA’s director and project manager of the camp, said entry is restricted to individuals who are referred to the camp by the county’s homeless outreach staff.

Residents must undergo background checks, she said. Those who have been convicted of a sex offense, a violent felony or a felony in the past seven years are not allowed.

Thompson said the county established those rules. “We had nothing to do with that,” she said.

The camp does not take “drop-ins,” county officials said.

One young man who was making his way up to Spokane, Washington, and who stood outside the camp Monday said he was told it would take two or three days before receiving any word on whether he could stay.

But without a county referral, that would be unlikely.

Neighborhood criticism

Sonoma County Homelessness Services Division Director Dave Kiff said he has received complaints from neighbors and county employees about people camping in the surrounding area.

The county has faced vehement criticism from neighbors worried about the camp’s impact on safety, trash, noise and other community concerns.

He said resolving those concerns was a “priority.”

The camp holds 87 tents surrounded by a screened perimeter fence.

The tents, arranged in pods of six, are equipped with a cot, blanket and smoke detector. Staff covered the tops of the rain-resistant tents with plastic to keep them dry during the latest storm.

“We survived the rain pretty well,” Kiff said.

Residents have access to a small kitchen area with snacks, a communal eating area that includes three picnic tables, two heaters and a charging station, storage bins, portable restrooms and hand-washing stations. Mobile shower stations are also brought in four times a week and hot meals are delivered once a day.

On Wednesday, a crew was finishing work on a wheelchair-accessible tent platform, while another team handled electrical work to shift the camp off generators onto the power grid.

Two security guards were stationed just inside the fence at the camp’s entrance at the corner of Administration Drive and Paulin Drive.

Residents are allowed to come and go throughout the day before the midnight to 5 a.m. curfew, but to enter, they must sign in and go through a security search to check for weapons and drugs, which are prohibited on site.

Many residents, including Barhah, said they don’t mind the security presence. However, advocates say others have raised concerns about overly strict rules and aggressive security measures.

“I just had somebody there say, ‘It feels like a prison to me,’” said Jackson, the Acts of Kindness co-founder.

On Thursday, she said she’s not been allowed to enter the camp to deliver hot meals. That’s something she said her organization was permitted to do at Los Guilicos Village, the tiny home site across from Oakmont in eastern Santa Rosa.

Alicia Roman, an attorney with California Legal Rural Assistance, she’s also heard residents compare the camp environment to a detention center.

One resident who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said she now leaves the camp only once a day to avoid multiple security searches, which she described as “invasive.”

On one occasion, she said, a security guard went through all of her groceries, pulling apart individual cheese slices to search for contraband.

Visitors are not yet allowed at the camp, though the county’s website says visitors are permitted between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. County and DEMA officials say visitors will be allowed soon but would not say when.

“We all have family that do love and care about us,” said a woman named Nycee, who would give only her first name, as she prepared to move in on March 23. “People can’t come look for you.”

Michelle Patino, DEMA’s co-owner, said the site’s guest policy would be discussed at a camp meeting on Monday.

“The residents will make the final decision,” she wrote in a Friday email to The Press Democrat.

Roman said the heavy security and strict rules can exacerbate anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder that many homeless people endure.

Still, she and other advocates have encouraged trail residents to give the camp a try.

“There’s no other options for unhoused people,” Roman said. “This is the only option they’re giving them. Los Guilicos is full. I tell them, ‘Go try it. If it doesn’t work out, just leave. You don’t have to stay there.’”

One of the new residents giving the camp a try is Julian Mendoza, 20, who had been living on the trail since the beginning of the year, when he was laid off from his job as a welder.

Mendoza, who has a wife and two children back in Mexico, suddenly had no money to pay for the apartment bedroom he shared with another person for $500 a month. He said he started living on the trail after asking a resident there if he could join him.

Mendoza, who stands at six feet and 200 pounds, was shy, and soft-spoken, his eyes only occasionally looking up from the ground.

He said it’s been difficult living on the trail, through storm after storm.

“It’s very different here,” he said of the managed camp, speaking in Spanish while sitting in the shelter’s shared warming and communal space. “The way they treat us, it’s good. There’s even a refrigerator where you can put your leftovers.”

“They told me that I might be able to find an affordable apartment to rent in the future if I behave myself,” he 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 Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.