As Santa Rosa homeless camp grew, frustrated residents flooded government leaders with emails

It started with a trickle in September. Residents passing by the growing number of tents along a stretch of public trail in west Santa Rosa would share their concerns about the homeless camp, often via email, to their elected representatives at City Hall and the Board of Supervisors.

By mid-October, the trail camp had grown to more than 100 residents, and squalid conditions were setting in that would precipitate an emergency declaration two months later and county plans to clear the trail by the end of this month.

“It was really picking up in October, leading up to the wildfire,” said Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, describing the level of public comment on homelessness around the time of the Kincade fire.

Her district includes the Joe Rodota Trail homeless encampment that by November had become the largest ever on record in the county, home to more than 200 people.

“This is a public safety hazard and a humanitarian crisis,” Hopkins said at the time, echoing the sentiments of many county residents.

Authorities are set Sunday to begin relocating some residents of the camp that now numbers at least 250 people. But county officials didn't take action until public feedback reached a fever pitch late last year.

For as the unsanctioned settlement on county parkland grew in west Santa Rosa, so too did the torrent of emails from the public.

They came in by the hundreds, flooding the inboxes of Santa Rosa council members, county supervisors and top officials for both local governments.

Members of the public decried camp conditions. They demanded action. And, they offered their own solutions to one of the county's most intractable problems.

Emails dating from November to mid-December and obtained by The Press Democrat through public records requests, show business owners documenting a cacophony of concerns. Trail users and community groups put forward petitions calling for action, and residents pushed for something more to be done.

Some of their proposals were clearly unworkable. Others appeared cruel and inhumane.

Concerns surge

In early December, the chorus of complaints tied to the camp reached a high note, calling out the risks it presented to public safety and health - from uncontrolled fires and untreated human waste to reports of theft, trespassing and violence, and a growing rat infestation.

Sebastopol resident Cheryl Sisson laid out the dangerous stakes of a mess she said government leaders had left to fester.

“This has to stop,” Sisson wrote in a Dec. 7 email to the Board of Supervisors. “Soon, someone is going to get hurt - the homeless fear no repercussions and people are really starting to get angry.”

Elected officials and their aides scrambled to answer as many emails as possible, building spreadsheets and special folders to contain the mass of incoming feedback. They crafted boilerplate responses to use as placeholders until they could share more personal correspondence.

Supervisor James Gore, who represents northern Sonoma County, said his staff was inundated with messages on the camp - a different experience from the normal deluge of emails supervisors get on hot-button issues.

“The distinction on this was it was very visceral,” Gore said.

The onslaught came as the trail camp continued to swell amid colder and wetter winter weather. The emails and voicemails offered a window into how elected officials grappled with the mounting pressure to take swift action.

Hopkins, who is nearing the end of her first term with the Board of Supervisors and is up for reelection, said the sheer volume of emails was rivaled for her only by the experience in the wake of her district's bout with devastating floods, and by the county's searing wildfires. And the constant emails over road damage, she added.

“Yeah, it's infrastructure, disaster, homelessness,” Hopkins said.

Residents want respect

Many writers identified themselves as taxpayers or residents living adjacent to the trail, a county park within Santa Rosa city limits.

They expressed frustration and anger that local officials allowed people to live on public land in such numbers. Fallout from the camp was spilling over into their yards and businesses, they wrote.

“This isn't a complex issue. I am a tax paying, hard working, contributing member of society who should not feel threatened on their own property by people who choose to contribute nothing and who trespass illegally,” Erin Rineberg, of Santa Rosa, said in a Nov. 17 email. She voiced concern for the well-being of homeless people, but deep dismay over repeated instances of trespassing. “Homeowners should have more rights and be treated with more respect than they are when it comes to the homeless.”

Neighbors near the trail, their emotions still raw from the Kincade fire and the evacuation orders that displaced nearly 200,000 ?residents, returned home to watch the camp grow almost immediately. Resident Bonita Cole spelled out her fears in a Nov. 4 email to county officials.

“It occurs to me that one carelessly discarded cigarette could turn this trail into a tunnel of fire,” Cole said.

Something short of that scenario happened late last month, when a propane tank exploded in the trail camp, fueling a fire that nearly jumped a neighbor's fence and left a 150-foot burn scar. It was the second such blaze, at nearly the same location, in as many months.

Some residents, including Samantha Yates, shared personal stories.

Yates called the encampment strung out along the south side of Highway 12 an eyesore. It hadn't affected her personally until Dec. 11, when, she said, she had packages stolen from her porch. A neighbor suspected trail residents, spying them jumping the fence back to the trail.

“Those were Christmas gifts I saved a long time for and put a lot of thought into,” Yates wrote in a Dec. 12 email. “To me, this is a personal attack and has gone too far.”

Mary Paternoster is chief operating officer of Southpoint Management, which has a self-storage facility separated from the trail by a fence. She sent numerous emails to county supervisors, attaching pictures of discarded drug needles carelessly thrown onto the property and documenting the trail's continual growth.

An email from Paternoster to the city about untended fires on the trail in November rose to Fire Chief Tony Gossner's attention and prompted an investigation by the Santa Rosa Fire Department. After a conversation with the chief about the complaint of open fires, Fire Marshal Scott Moon dispatched two inspectors along the trail, emails showed.

The inspectors “observed very little activity” on their Nov. 14 visit. They reported meeting a homeowner and trail user who was considering selling his home because of the encampment and came back with “an interesting observation”: The storage facility appeared to be “spreading horse manure or some type of fertilizer on the ground … It was quite ‘fragrant' to say the least,” a fire inspector wrote in an email to Moon.

The fertilizer was spread along the fence for planting to beautify the wall as part of the facility's operations, Paternoster said in an interview. “We have a huge facility, we're constantly planting, we're constantly cleaning, we're constantly doing stuff,” she wrote.

Trail use curtailed

While many people voiced concerns about safety and quality of life, others lodged more niche complaints.

Zeke Gibson wrote to bemoan the trail's impact on his family, but also on his hobby - flying model aircraft, which he likes to do on land near the trail. Gibson later told The Press Democrat that his “small RC flying club” has since disbanded, the result, in part, of the lack of access to the trail.

He has been jolted from sleep early in the morning by people picking through his recycling, presumably looking for cans to trade in for change.

“They are everywhere in this city, often within feet of my home where my family sleeps,” Gibson wrote, “and now I can't even enjoy an occasional trip to a dairy field to fly a model airplane because of this absolute failure of government?”

John Wilshire and Lynn Wilshire complained of a negative review on their vacation rental because of the homeless problem.

Debbie Moore said the trail camp interfered with trips by her household to a favored eatery.

“I just wanted to let you know that we are no longer eating dinner at our favorite pho restaurant on Stony Point Road due to the encampment situation,” Moore said in an email to county officials.

Alternatives suggested

In almost every complaint, a solution was offered.

Residents clamored for a sanctioned camp to shelter trail residents, pushing for sites including the county-owned, 72-acre Chanate Road hospital property and the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

Residents suggested 3D-printed houses, straw bale structures, $350 Walmart sheds and even a Press Democrat special section profiling the “homeless person of the day.”

Other ideas for homeless campers crossed into darker territory. They included a proposal that the county “place them in a cage down at the old airfield” or “put the unwanted behind a chain-link fence and deny them services.”

Hopkins vehemently rejected such approaches.

“Internment camps are not ever a solution,” she said in an interview. “They're human beings on the trail. At the end of the day, it could be any of us.”

Another concerning suggestion came from lifelong Santa Rosa resident Greg Haworth. It drew the attention of Ray Navarro, Santa Rosa's police chief.

‘Very Bright Lights'

In an email early on the morning of Nov. 6, Haworth explained that he frequently commuted along the trail late at night and had to buy a bright bicycle light to see, noting that he'd found the trail blocked by “a man with an absurdly long bike” the night before. He'd previously narrowly missed hitting a prone man's head and had struck at least three rats.

He dubbed his solution “Operation: Very Bright Lights,” in which officials would use portable lights, like those deployed by authorities at checkpoints, to brighten part of the trail for safety.

“Illumination is desperately needed,” he wrote.

A city secretary forwarded the message to Navarro and a handful of other officials. The chief replied to check with staff overseen by David Gouin, the city's director of housing and community services, giving at least some credence within City Hall to the proposal.

“Check with David's group but I think lighting in a county park should be directed to the County, maybe with the city explaining that we can bring the topic up in our collaborative meetings,” Navarro wrote on Nov. 6.

In response, a city homelessness staffer expressed her consternation to a co-worker: “Really Ray?!#@,” she wrote in an email.

Gore noted the many emails from residents who swore those at the trail were from outside the county or the state, that they're being shipped here or that aid provided here for homeless people was driving more to come - all unfounded or incorrect based on data, Gore said.

Nearly 90% of local homeless people have lived in the county for several years before becoming homeless, according to a 2019 survey of the homeless population.

“I've never met an issue where people have such strong, entrenched opinions,” he said. “People have their minds made up in spite of the data.”

A few emails were more compassionate, suggesting housing or shelter options for campers and urging action before nighttime temperatures dipped below freezing.

Finally, in late December, the county took its biggest step amid the pressure, with the Board of Supervisors voting to spend $11.63 million on a package of short- and long-term shelter and housing options. One is a sanctioned camp that will take 60 people living on the Joe Rodota Trail. Move-in at the county's Los Guilicos campus in east Santa Rosa is set to begin Sunday, several days before authorities are scheduled to clear the trail.

Hopkins acknowledged the push for solutions, saying she was inspired by residents willing to pitch in and work toward something better.

“I honestly think there's such a hunger for change,” Hopkins said. “Frustration is a critical driver for innovation. I think it's been the fault of government too long to think we know best. The community is on board and is invested in solutions.”

You can reach Staff Writer Tyler Silvy at 707-526-8667 or at tyler.silvy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @tylersilvy. You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports