Santa Rosa launches ‘safe parking’ program for homeless in vehicles

Santa Rosa has launched a “safe parking” program on the west side of the city for dozens of local homeless people living out of their cars and RVs.

Opened Monday, the two-year pilot program has begun hosting about 20 people at a city-owned parking lot near the Finley Community Center.

The lot at 55 Stony Point Road has about 50 total spaces. All are expected to be filled in the coming weeks, city officials said.

The site will remain open 24 hours a day and offer food, showers, counseling, medical services and case management to help residents find housing. There will also be all-hours private security for the first three months of the program, after which the need for security will be evaluated on a monthly basis.

“The site creates capacity for the city to address the impacts (of homelessness) within our neighborhoods while providing a safe place for people to park,” said Mayor Chris Rogers.

City staff estimate people are currently living out of at least 330 vehicles in Santa Rosa. Local law enforcement officials have said that number appears to have increased during the pandemic.

Countywide, about 700 people live in their vehicles, making up over a quarter of the local homeless population of roughly 2,700, according to the latest annual census results from 2020.

In recent years, cities across California have increasingly opened safe parking lots as a cost-effective and quick way to carve out managed living space for homeless people. Officials also have touted the sites as way to disband vehicle encampments that frustrate local communities.

The city of Sebastopol last month launched a 18-space RV safe parking program over opposition from neighbors. In Santa Rosa, only a handful of private sites currently offer a total of about a dozen overnight spaces.

To fund the new program over the next two years, the city has put aside $2 million in federal stimulus money. That’s on top of $315,000 in local funds already in the city budget and a $500,000 grant from Sonoma County.

Assuming the lot hosts about 70 residents at a time, current funding would put the program’s per-person cost at around $1,600 a month, or $55 a day. That’s significantly less than many local efforts to house homeless people — including at the former Hotel Azura in Santa Rosa — which often top $100 a day.

The parking program is being operated by the city’s primary homeless services provider, Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa, which managed similar sites at local church parking lots for a few years until state funding for that program ran out in 2018.

Mayor Rogers said the new site will be key to helping “service-resistant” members of the city’s homeless population.

Local homeless people often turn down shelter beds 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.

In addition to providing another shelter option, officials ultimately hope the program will make it easier for outreach teams to help unhoused people find lasting homes.

“It provides another tool in our toolbox,” Rogers said.

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