Sebastopol safe parking site to be replaced by affordable housing

A Sebastopol RV village for people who are homeless is set to be replaced with a 22-unit housing project for people with extremely low incomes.

The 845 Gravenstein Highway North site is now occupied by Horizon Shine Village, a temporary site for people living in RVs and campers that opened in February 2022.

St. Vincent de Paul Sonoma County, a charity that owns the north Sebastopol property and leases it to Horizon Shine’s operator, hopes to break ground on the permanent housing project in spring 2024.

“Our experience dictates that these types of projects are really good ways to address the growing homelessness crisis in Sonoma County, and if you have a good operator, that becomes exponentially more true,” Jack Tibbetts, St. Vincent de Paul’s executive director, told the Sebastopol City Council May 16.

The council authorized the plan over objections by some residents that the city already has too much housing of its kind.

“We’re greatly over-delivering in terms of providing facilities for homeless and other mentally unstable people in the city already, so I’m not clear what problem we’re trying to solve here by building even more,” Oliver Marks, a candidate for city council last year, said at the May 16 meeting.

But Mayor Neysa Hinton, who joined a 4-1 vote in favor of the project, said: “It’s really smart for us and it just makes a lot of sense to me. It’s for low income housing, and a lot of people need that.”

As part of the resolution authorizing it, St. Vincent de Paul will cover all costs related to city staff’s work on the project.

The project is currently contingent on St. Vincent de Paul getting state Project Homekey funding for permanent affordable housing. A case manager would provide support services to residents, Tibbets told the council, and the site would have a resident manager as well.

The temporary RV village, with 25 residents, is operated and managed by Sonoma Applied Village Services, or SAVS, a nonprofit provider of services to people who are homeless.

St. Vincent de Paul “told us that we can remain there until the first shovel hits the ground,” said Adrienne Lauby, board president of SAVS. “In other words, they're going to work with us to leave people there as long as possible.”

Lauby said that SAVS has known the site was to be developed into permanent housing since St. Vincent de Paul bought it in 2021.

It’s possible that some Horizon Shine residents could end up living in the new housing, Tibbetts said. In any case, he said, his organization will work to ensure that current residents are not simply displaced but end up in a good living situation.

“I will do everything in my personal and financial power at St. Vincent de Paul to make sure those folks get reconnected with a better outcome,“ Tibbetts told the City Council.

One council member raised the issue of another St. Vincent de Paul facility that was the subject of intense criticism after a 2022 Press Democrat report about residents living in poor conditions at the former Gold Coin motel in Santa Rosa.

Residents at the former motel — which is being renovated into St. Vincent de Paul Commons, another Project Homekey project — had complained about lack of maintenance, mold and other safety issues that persisted after St. Vincent de Paul bought it.

“What have you done to rectify that? A lot of people have many, many concerns about this site you were managing last year,” Councilmember Jill McLewis asked Tibbetts at the May 16 meeting.

Tibbetts said St. Vincent de Paul had worked to keep people who were about to be kicked out by the motel’s former owner housed at the property, but that pandemic-era rules, among other factors, had prevented repairs from being made in several cases, despite the charity’s efforts.

“I would challenge you to find any other affordable housing entity that has gone to those lengths to retain people in place,“ Tibbetts said. ”Most organizations probably would have let those displacements occur because when you do, it’s definitely the easiest path forward.“

Ultimately, McLewis voted against the project.

She said: “I could support this if it was more mixed (income) housing and supporting more people who were contributing to the community. But bringing people in from outside the community who are going to require numerous services and also be more of a burden on our fire and safety — I can’t support this type of housing.”

Tibbetts declined to comment for this article but said the public can get more information about the project by emailing info@svdp-sonoma.org, or calling him at 707-495-7438.

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay