Sonoma County Children’s Village property goes up for sale

Sonoma County Children's Village is selling its property in southeast Santa Rosa, three months after shutting down the foster care home for financial reasons.

The 2-acre site that served as a refuge for seven dozen foster children over the past decade was listed earlier this week for $5.3 million. Despite the sale, officials vowed to continue with their mission to support and advocate for foster care children.

“There's still foster children who need help and there are still siblings who need to be kept together,” said Jeff Okrepkie, a volunteer board member.

Located on a quiet, U-shaped street just a quarter-mile west of Taylor Mountain Regional Park, the facility focused on keeping together siblings who otherwise would have been separated and sent to different foster homes after being removed from their biological families for safety reasons. It also provided a family-like setting for the kids staying in the four five-bedroom townhomes on the site, which features a playground, picnic area, volleyball and tetherball courts and a large recreation room that included foosball and ping-pong tables.

The village provided a place where the kids could feel safe and be “a child again,” Executive Director Anjana Utarid said.

Each of the homes was staffed by “village parents,” while seniors who served as surrogate grandparents lived in the small, six-unit apartment building across the narrow street, Utarid said. One of the apartment units also was turned into a family reunification center, where biological parents could stop by to read to their kids and cook them meals under staff supervision, she said.

They also taught parents life skills, such as budgeting, Okrepkie said.

Drop in placements

As the state started to shift away from group homes two years ago, Children's Village began to see a decrease in placements of foster kids. Sonoma County cut back the number of kids it placed in all its group homes to 53 in August 2015 from 114 kids five years earlier.

Board members determined this past summer it was no longer feasible to keep the Children's Village open with only 16 foster children, and shut it down in October. The center operated on a $2 million annual budget. About 75 percent of the funding came from the federal and state government, while the rest was from donations.

Its closure came 15 months before a state deadline to shut down most group homes and focus on more family-like settings for children in the foster care system.

Children's Village board member Jodi Shubin said she believed their model met the state's goal of a family- like setting, and although it wasn't a “traditional” group home it was licensed as such because there were no other classifications. She said they worked with state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, to change the foster care home's classification, but they were unsuccessful.

“We just got stuck in the middle of this,” Shubin said. “We don't know how to get out of it.”

Still, she said, they will continue to looks for ways to provide support for foster children. Shubin said the 11-member board, which expects to welcome three new members later this week, continues to brainstorm ideas on how to best serve and represent foster kids.

“There is no way this is going to end with the sale of the property,” she said.

Children's Village was created in the memory of Georgia Moses, a 12-year-old Santa Rosa girl whose body was found dumped by Highway 101 in Petaluma in 1997. Utarid said nobody knew the girl was missing for days.

A small statue of an angel dedicated to her still sits in the memorial garden next to the playground.

“I feel like we owe it to her to continue this mission,” Utarid said.

When the children learned the foster care home would close, Utarid said some of them offered to put on a bake sale to raise money to save it. She's received numerous letters from the children since the site closed. Utarid said they continue to ask when they're going to come back home.

Groups of siblings

Of the 16 children, seven were in sibling groups of two or three. Some of the siblings were separated when they were returned to child welfare officials in Sonoma, Mendocino and Solano counties, Utarid said.

Some children had left behind Christmas lights and stick-on decals on the walls of their rooms. However, the paintings and drawings that once decorated the windows of the homes were taken down. The books in the library were boxed up and the popcorn machine was unplugged and tucked away in a corner of the recreation room.

“It's weird. It's so quiet,” Okrepkie said while standing outside near the playground, where a ball had been left out under a swing.

“It's surreal,” Shubin added.

Several inquiries

Paul Schwartz and Keith White with Santa Rosa's Terra Firma Global Partners are handling the sale.

They've received several inquires from nonprofit groups, developers and apartment owners in and outside of Sonoma County, said Schwartz, a senior associate at the real estate firm. He said there's a potential to convert the 3,800-square-foot community building into at least two apartments and building four additional townhomes on the site, which backs up to Colgan Creek.

“I anticipate there will be a lot of interest in the property,” he said. “We are hopeful we can provide the Children's Village organization with an excellent buyer that recognizes the value of the property and respects (its) history.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.