Judge temporarily stops Sonoma County from shutting down Roseland homeless camps

A federal judge Monday temporarily blocked Sonoma County’s planned eviction of the numerous homeless people who are living in tents behind a Dollar Tree store in southwest Santa Rosa.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco set a hearing for 10 a.m. Thursday and said county officials cannot in the meantime enforce their notice telling homeless residents to leave the Roseland property.

The county’s Community Development Commission, which owns the Sebastopol Road site where about 100 people now live in two adjoining encampments, had given residents until today to leave and, ideally, move into a shelter bed or long-term housing unit. But homeless advocates sued Friday, arguing that clearing the encampment would violate residents’ constitutional rights and represent cruel and unusual punishment because many of them, especially those with disabilities, hadn’t been offered placement in suitable housing and didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“It’s an incredible human rights tragedy,” said Adrienne Lauby, a member of the local activist group Homeless Action, which joined five encampment residents as plaintiffs in the case.

A tent village first took root at the Dollar Tree site in 2015. But the homeless population there swelled in recent months after the October wildfires and Santa Rosa’s move to clear encampments in Highway 101 underpasses downtown.

Now the property has become a flashpoint for debate about two of the county’s most persistent public policy challenges: its outsized homeless population and its severe housing shortage.

County officials maintain the site needs to be cleared of tents in order to make room for a long-planned new development slated to include 175 desperately needed housing units. Homeless advocates and encampment residents welcome the plans but contend there aren’t enough shelter beds or affordable, long-term housing options for the tent village residents.

“You want to shut this down to start building there? OK,” said Alicia Roman, a Santa Rosa attorney who’s on the legal team representing the encampment residents. “But don’t shut it down without opening up another sanctioned encampment somewhere in the meantime. Don’t send them back onto the trails. Don’t send them back into places where they might be subject to citation or arrests or other things like that.”

Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who represents Roseland, said Chhabria’s judicial review is “perfectly appropriate,” and was optimistic the county could demonstrate it has delivered “real results” in its efforts to provide shelter or long-term housing to everyone living behind the Dollar Tree.

County leaders set up a housing navigation center near the encampments where homeless outreach workers have worked to find shelter or housing for all tent village residents. Those efforts have so far resulted in 24 people placed into shelter and five people moved into the Palms Inn, a former motel on Santa Rosa Avenue that’s been converted into 104 units of permanent supportive housing. A total of 65 people from the Roseland encampments have been interviewed and assessed, county officials said.

Hopkins said the county went to great lengths to provide enough resources, but some people chose not to take advantage of them and officials cannot “force help on anyone.” She remains open to the prospect of sanctioning an encampment somewhere else, but described the current setup in Roseland as unworkable, in part due to a “significant” syphilis outbreak within the encampments as well as concerns about violent incidents and conflicts with neighboring businesses.

“In some ways, holding this up as a model is a really dangerous thing to do, because that was not a safe place for people to live,” Hopkins said. “It was inhumane. It was not appropriate for individual human beings, and we need to do better.”

Homeless Action recently submitted a proposal to the county for sanctioned tent villages that included a budget and several suggested sites around Santa Rosa. However, the proposal didn’t appear viable in the short run, said Margaret Van Vliet, the development commission’s executive director.

“We’ve had to stay focused on what’s right in front of us,” Van Vliet said. “Long term, maybe what they’re proposing could be a model to be looked at, but it’s far too speculative for us to shift gears on the navigation center and go that direction.”

Van Vliet said she was confident the county had enough alternate places for everyone at the encampments after the site shuts down. At least 64 shelter beds are available in Santa Rosa between Sam Jones Hall and the Redwood Gospel Mission, according to the commission.