Homeless campers from Joe Rodota Trail told to leave third Santa Rosa park in a week

The five tents that have popped up in South Davis Park are discreetly tucked under a spiral concrete ramp and footbridge in southwest Santa Rosa.

Teens on bicycles, their tires screeching, race down the spiral ramp, coming off the walking bridge over Highway 101, and just a few yards away parents watch their children play in the park’s jungle gym.

A woman who lives in one of the tents said she had recently landed at South Davis Park after being evicted from a homeless encampment at A Place to Play Community Park on West Third Street in Santa Rosa.

Police officials said they’ve ordered the South Davis Park campers to vacate the park by 8 a.m. Tuesday. The campers are among a larger group of homeless people who have been on the move for most of the month since the clearing of an encampment of some 250 people along the Joe Rodota Trail in late January.

A group of about five people landed at South Davis Park on Friday, after being shooed out of Olive Park near downtown a day earlier. They stayed there for the night after vacating A Place to Play park, their stopping place for about a week after they and about two dozen others were cleared from an encampment off West Robles Road in south Santa Rosa.’

Prior to that, they had been part of the encampment on the Joe Rodota Trail, which was declared a public health and safety hazard by Sonoma County supervisors before it was evacuated and shut down Jan. 31. While many of those who left the trail accepted the county and aid agencies’ offers of alternative housing arrangements, others are still sleeping outside.

Holly Davies, a Santa Rosa resident who grew up in the neighborhood around South Davis Park, said she was sympathetic to the plight of the campers. On Saturday, Davies was visiting the park. Her mother still lives in the neighborhood.

“You’re not fixing anything,” Davies said, referring to the constant encampment evictions. “All they’re doing is causing more trauma to people that already are not loving life.”

About six of 14 campers at A Place to Play accepted offers of shelter when that camp was disbanded on Wednesday, Police Sgt. Jonathan Wolf said.

Some of the others went their separate ways, though about five landed at South Davis Park on Friday, he said.

Four of the five people at South Davis Park have petitioned the county and the city in an effort to find an alternative to shelters they’ve been offered, saying their disabilities make the offered options a poor fit, according to Alicia Roman of California Rural Legal Assistance, which is representing them. Some who experience homelessness have physical, emotional or mental health issues that limit the kind of housing they can tolerate.

The fifth individual is hoping to get into the Mary Isaak Center in Petaluma, which is operated by the Committee on the Shelterless, Roman said.

Police began receiving neighborhood complaints and arrested two men on suspicion of drug possession and violation of probation on Friday, he said.

Police also posted a notice advising the individuals camping there of the Tuesday deadline to leave, he said.

Wolf said outreach workers would continue to work with the people there to try to find solutions and services for them.