Police order homeless camp residents at A Place to Play park in Santa Rosa to leave

A week-old encampment at A Place to Play Community Park on West Third Street in Santa Rosa has become the latest focal point for ongoing frustration and conflict over how best to address Sonoma County’s seemingly intractable homeless problem.

Between 10 and 15 people have taken up residence since Feb. 11 at the westernmost entrance to the 77-acre park and sports complex, drawing the ire of neighbors and the scrutiny of police amid growing fatigue over a repetitive cycle of homeless camps going up and then being cleared, only to have them reappear somewhere else.

Santa Rosa police have given people living in the latest encampment until 5 p.m. Wednesday to move on, notifying them they would be ordered to vacate almost as soon as they pitched their tents last week, said Alicia Roman, who represents most of them as a staff attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance Inc.

But those interviewed Tuesday still said they don’t know where they will go next, though they seemed resigned to packing up and heading off to find a new place to sleep.

“I’ve been everywhere since Sixth Street,” one man, known as “Bicycle Dave” Sjoberg, said. He was referring to an unsanctioned encampment that arose under Highway 101 in downtown Santa Rosa between the August 2017 dismantling of an enduring encampment called “Homeless Hill,” at the end of Farmers Lane and Bennett Valley Road, and the blossoming of a huge camp at the Roseland Dollar Tree store the following winter.

Most, if not all of the people, sheltering in tents or under tarps along the drive into the West Third Street city park moved there from a larger encampment off West Robles Road in south Santa Rosa, where about 38 occupants were evicted under the watch of Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies on Feb. 10.

They had arrived there 10 days earlier, after the high-profile closure of the sprawling encampment along the Joe Rodota Trail, where at least 258 people had formed a village over the previous six months. It became an unsanitary, hazard-prone stretch of makeshift shelters that prompted scores of public safety calls related to drug use, fires, theft and violence.

Neighbors’ alarm upon seeing campers last week unload what in some cases are extensive belongings at the community park site was nearly immediate and included calls to police and the media, as well as shared alerts on social media.

“Complaints started coming in very quickly,” Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Jonathan Wolf said.

It wasn’t just their tents that caught neighbors’ attention, he said. “They also had a significant amount of property, which draws a lot of attention,” Wolf said.

Martin Campbell, a resident of Darla Drive, across West Third Street near the encampment, said he first caught word of it on Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social networking service where the entire neighborhood seemed to be in tense conversation - “some people being nice, and some being not so nice.”

“It’s still going crazy,” he said of the social media conversation about the camp.

Several people apparently displeased have confronted occupants or driven slowly by, sometimes recording them, as one did on Tuesday.

Another one, West End neighborhood resident Allen Thomas, a member of Citizens for Action Now!, or CAN!, parked nearby to watch the encampment for a time on Tuesday afternoon.

“This is unacceptable,” he said. “It’s not a place that’s suitable for them to live. I think the idea of a sanctioned encampment is one of the most insane.”

Wolf’s team of officers has maintained a visible presence at the park in recent days and has been working with Catholic Charities’ Homeless Outreach Services Team, or HOST, to see where they can offer help to occupants of the camp.

But police also have made arrests, including at least four on Tuesday, conducting searches of campsites belonging to people on probation and booking those found in violation for drugs, drug paraphernalia or other reasons into jail.

“Even though there’s a process to deal with the camping, we still are responding to complaints,” Wolf said.

Jennielynn Holmes, the Catholic Charities’ chief program officer, said the HOST team was hopeful a few of the occupants would accept shelter beds that had been reserved for them, while others outreach workers have spoken with may take more time.

But attorney Roman said at least 10 occupants of Place to Play park have formally appealed for an alternative to shelter they’ve been offered under a legal settlement reached last summer between the city, the county and Homeless Action!, an advocacy group working on behalf of homeless individuals and seeking to end the cycle of having them rousted with no place to go.

“Most of these people requested reasonable accommodation, and their requests for accommodation were not answered,” Roman said. “They just were not responded to. They’re just being ignored.”

Under a civil court settlement, local officials can only force people camping on public property to leave if certain provisions are met, including that they be offered “adequate shelter reasonably suitable to the disability-related needs of the person.”

The federal judge’s ruling specifically acknowledges that “a barracks-style placement may not be adequate” for people with certain mental health conditions - an echo of complaints commonly raised about Sam Jones Hall, Sonoma County’s largest shelter, with 213 beds.

Holmes acknowledged Sam Jones isn’t for everyone, but said 111 people have been placed from there into other kinds of permanent housing over the past six months, so “obviously it’s working for some individuals.”

She also noted the HOST team has placed 170 people in shelters and 91 others into permanent housing straight from encampments during the six-month period. Sometimes it takes many, many contacts between outreach workers and individual clients to build enough trust and understanding to work out the right solutions, she said.

“It’s not as black and white as some would like to think,” Holmes said.

Wolf said the campers at the West Third Street park were put on notice that failure to vacate the park by 5 p.m. Wednesday could result in citation or arrest, but said there could be leeway for those actively working on a solution for their next move.

“Hope it all goes well,” said Campbell, the Darla Drive neighbor, “for them and for everybody. We’re all human at the end of the day, after all.”