Propped up in the middle of a grassy yard with two goats and a few chickens in north Sebastopol, a hand-painted sign reads: “Still plenty of time to stop city council’s illegal RV camp.”
Below the blue script, a long arrow points to the former AmeriGas propane store lot next door, the site of a planned “RV village” for a few dozen homeless people living out of their vehicles.
City officials and homeless advocates within weeks aim to move 18 trailers and campers from a longstanding vehicle encampment on Morris Street near The Barlow shopping center to the private lot about a mile away at 845 Gravenstein Highway North.
Brett Palm, who lives next door to the planned village and put up the sign, is part of a local neighborhood group suing to stop the project. Palm is worried about noise and safety — and in particular RV dwellers’ dogs harassing his animals.
“A lot of people just think it’s a done deal,” he said of the village. “And I wanted to let a lot of people know it’s still pending.”
The one-year safe parking pilot program has become a new flash point for the west county town known as much for its progressive politics as its rural charm. Sebastopol, home to about 8,000 people, is one of a growing number of Sonoma County’s smaller cities now struggling over how to respond to a homelessness crisis that has only intensified in recent years.
The county’s last homeless count in early 2020 found 129 unhoused people in Sebastopol, up from 69 two years prior. All of them lived outside or in vehicles.
“This is not a town where you say everyone (who’s homeless) go away. It’s a town where we look for solutions,” said Sebastopol Councilwoman Diana Rich, who with fellow Councilwoman Una Glass has taken the lead on local homelessness policy.
The trial RV village follows the 2020 conversion of the 31-room Sebastopol Inn into homeless housing using state money — part of an overall $12 billion effort Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted in a visit to the property in July 2021.
Many in Sebastopol, however, accused the county, which spearheaded that project, and some city officials, who supported it, of rushing plans through and ignoring their concerns, a criticism renewed of late over the safe parking program.
“I know a lot of (homeless) people need help, but you just don’t just spring it on people,” said Palm, who maintains he didn’t receive notice about the safe parking site until a few days before it was approved. “We would have been glad to discuss and go over the plan.”
The City Council quickly approved the RV village in November to meet a deadline ensuring it received $368,000 in federal money to help fund the project. It settled on the Gravenstein Highway lot late in the process. Despite the accelerated turnaround, council members said they aimed to make every attempt to hear residents’ concerns.
Representatives with Sonoma Applied Village services, the nonprofit selected to manage the program, along with council members, have since begun reaching out to residents and local businesses in attempt to alleviate worries about bringing homeless people into their neighborhood.
Adrienne Lauby, board president of SAVS, said the program will be designed to prevent the kinds of health and safety issues associated with homeless encampments. It will include wraparound services for residents, on-site staff, trash pick up as well as 24/7 private security for at least the first month.
“Most of the problems go away when you get people into a calm situation,” Lauby said.
In Sebastopol, at least two smaller private safe parking sites are already in operation at a former mobile home park and a community church across the street from the planned village.
Santa Rosa, meanwhile, is planning its own safe parking program for around 50 vehicles near the Finley Community Center. The site was set to be up and running this month.
Showdown over RV street parking ban
In agreeing to the new pilot program, which local officials hope can be a model for future sites across the county, the City Council also promised to pass an ordinance that would effectively ban RV parking on city streets during daylight hours in hopes of preventing encampments like the one on Morris Street.
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