Santa Rosa considers sanctioned homeless camp as coronavirus complicates shelter and enforcement

As unsanctioned homeless camps grow downtown, Santa Rosa will try to steer more than two dozen people living on the street into hotel rooms or dormitories during the coronavirus pandemic, creating temporary opportunities for social distancing for a fraction of the local unsheltered population as officials decide whether to create some sort of managed encampment on city property.

Homeless outreach workers in a recent survey found 187 unsheltered people in Santa Rosa at known encampments that were growing in population and density, including 26 particularly vulnerable homeless people the city was working to place in rooms at the Sandman Hotel, said Dave Gouin, the city’s housing and community services director.

The city, which owns the Samuel L. Jones Hall homeless shelter, moved 45 people into the Sandman Hotel on March 20 to create more room between beds in Sam Jones, the largest shelter in Sonoma County. Among the two sets of relocated residents, those chosen for motel lodging are either seniors, have an underlying medical condition, or both, Gouin said.

“First, we have to get the most vulnerable safe, and then make decisions on how to create social distancing within our encampments,” Gouin said, referencing clusters of homeless people underneath Highway 101, near Doyle Park and along the Prince Memorial Greenway.

Santa Rosa’s homeless population was last pegged at about 1,800 in the county’s 2019 census, and about a quarter of all homeless individuals in the area live with at least one chronic health problem, according to the county. Results from this year’s survey, delayed until February due to the encampment on the Joe Rodota Trail, have not yet been released.

More moves to improve social distancing among the homeless may be forthcoming, Gouin said. The options include a temporary shelter site on a city-owned site, akin to the no-frills encampment established recently on the top of a parking garage in Las Vegas.

“It’s all about creating social distancing among the homeless population,” Gouin said.

Gouin and a city spokeswoman, Adriane Mertens, declined to say which specific sites were being considered, how quickly the city would move on a plan, what the capacity of a facility might be, or how much it would cost.

“The city is currently assessing the vulnerability of unsheltered individuals and developing strategies with our other government partners to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 in our community,” Mertens said in a statement. “This includes evaluating locations that will address social distancing requirements. ... Also, costs are being developed for a safe social distance program.”

Santa Rosa decided in mid-March not to break up existing encampments, as the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention has warned that rousting illegal campsites might further spread COVID-19. Sonoma County’s shelter-in-place order - set to run through May 3 - absolves homeless people of the requirement to stay at home and allows for other homelessness-related projects and facilities to remain active. It also prescribes 12-?foot-by-12-foot sleeping spaces for homeless individuals and says that “government agencies should provide restroom and hand-washing facilities for such individuals” per CDC guidelines.

Any temporary managed encampment would need to adhere to the 12-by-12 guideline, which would necessarily limit how many people it could hold, Gouin said.

Sonoma County already set up dozens of restrooms and hand-washing stations across the county, mostly in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, at places where homeless people are known to congregate.

County officials, meanwhile, have yet to place people in the 10 trailers received from the state in late February. After floating a plan to procure up to 450 hotel rooms for homeless people, the county pivoted this month and put most of that money to outreach and sanitation services. By Tuesday, it had provided shelter to just 20 additional people since the local shutdown went into effect March 18.

In Las Vegas, city and county officials opened a tented shelter for 500 homeless people on the top deck of a parking garage, staffed by medical students and volunteers, at a cost of roughly $8.8 million, the Las Vegas Sun reported. The site, which is set to be open for up to three to four months, was erected quickly after a person in a homeless shelter in the region tested positive for COVID-19, shutting down the shelter, the Sun reported.

To date, Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, which runs Sam Jones, has not reported any cases of COVID-19 among shelter residents, said Jennielynn Holmes, chief program officer for the religious nonprofit. Sam Jones’ occupancy has hovered near its new, smaller capacity of roughly 180 beds in recent days, she said.

The temporary relocation of shelter residents to the Sandman Hotel is set to expire at the end of the month unless the city decides to extend or expand the initiative, Gouin said.

By May, Sonoma State University, where a gymnasium and campus housing are being transformed to serve as patient care and coronavirus isolation spots, could take the 71 relocated homeless people, Gouin said.

“Ideally, we’ll be able to move them before the end of the month,” he said.

The city and county remain bound by a federal injunction that limits enforcement action against illegal encampments. Local authorities went ahead and cleared a historically large encampment along the Joe Rodota Trail in west Santa Rosa earlier this year - a close-quarters linear village that would have provided the coronavirus with ample opportunity to quickly spread from campsite to campsite.

While the city has refrained from strict enforcement during the shelter-in-place order, officers’ hands aren’t totally tied. Officers recently issued written warnings for occupants of cars parked illegally on Doyle Park Drive, the road leading up to the city park of the same name. The forested, creekside park is a common gathering place for people without permanent addresses. Now many are parked outside the closed gate.

“We’re still not moving homeless encampments,” Sgt. Chris Mahurin said.

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