What can be learned from Santa Rosa tent city?
SANTA ROSA — They knew the neighborhood would revolt.
It was early May, and officials in this Northern California city known for its farm-to-table dining culture and pumpedup housing prices were frantically debating how to keep COVID-19 from infiltrating the homeless camps proliferating in the region’s celebrated parks and trails. For years, the number of people living homeless in Santa Rosa and the verdant hills and valleys of broader Sonoma County had crept downward — and then surged, exacerbated by three punishing wildfire seasons that destroyed thousands of homes in four years.
Seemingly overnight, the city’s homeless crisis had burst into view. And with the onset of COVID-19, it posed a devastating health threat to the hundreds of people living in shelters, tents and makeshift shanties, as well as the service providers and emergency responders trying to help them.
In the preceding weeks, as COVID-19 made its first advance through California, Gov. Gavin Newsom had called on cities and counties to persuade hotel operators to open their doors to people living on the streets whose age and health made them vulnerable. But in Santa Rosa, a town that thrives on tourist dollars, city leaders knew they would never find enough owners to volunteer their establishments. City Council member Tom Schwedhelm, then serving as mayor, settled on an idea to pitch dozens of tents in the parking lot of a gleaming community center in an affluent neighborhood known as Finley Park, a couple of miles west of Santa Rosa’s central business district.
Neighborhood residents weren’t keen on the idea of accepting homeless people into their enclave of tree-lined streets and sleepy cul-de-sacs. Yet in short order, thousands of residents and businesses received letters notifying them of the city’s plans to erect 70 tents that could shelter as many as 140 people at the Finley Community Center, a neighborhood jewel
that draws scores of families and fitness enthusiasts to its manicured picnic grounds, sparkling pool and tennis courts.
The backlash was fierce. For three hours on a Thursday evening in midMay, Santa Rosa officials defended their plans as hundreds of residents flooded the phone lines to register their discontent.
“Will there be a list of everybody who decided to do this to us and our park, in case we want to vote them out?” one resident barked.
“This is a family neighborhood,” another fumed.
“How can we feel safe using our park?” others pleaded.
In Santa Rosa, like so many other communities, strenuous neighborhood objections typically would drive a stake through a proposal for homeless housing and services. Not this time. Elected officials were not asking; they were telling. The project would move ahead.
“Go ahead and vote me out,” said Schwedhelm, recounting his mindset at the time. “You want to shout at me and get angry? Go ahead. It’s important for government to listen, but the reality is these are our neighbors, so let’s help them.”
Within days, the spacious parking lot at the Finley Community Center was cordoned off with green mesh fencing. Inside, spaced 12 feet apart, were 68 blue tents, each equipped with sleeping bags and storage bin. A neat row of portable toilets lined one side of the encampment, and it was fitted throughout with handwashing stations and misters for the summer heat.
The city contracted with Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa to manage the camp, and social workers fanned out to the city shelters and unsanctioned encampments, where they found dozens of takers. The first dozen residents were in their tents four days after the site was approved, and the population quickly swelled to nearly 70. In exchange for shelter, showers and three daily meals, camp residents agreed to an 8 p.m. curfew and a contract pledging to honor mask and physical-distancing requirements and act as good neighbors.
Santa Rosa’s tent city opened May 18. And, not too long after, something remarkable happened. Finley Park residents stopped protesting and started dropping off donations of goods — food, clothing, hand sanitizer. The tennis and pickleball courts, an afternoon favorite for retirees, were bustling again. Parents and kids once more crowded the nearby playground.
And inside that towering green perimeter, people started getting their lives together.
From May to late November, Santa Rosa would spend $680,000 to supply and manage the site, a sixmonth experiment that would chart a new course for the city’s approach to homeless services. As cities across California wrestle with a crisis of homelessness that has drawn international condemnation, the Santa Rosa experience suggests a way forward. Rather than engage in months of paralyzing discussion with neighborhood opponents before committing to a housing or shelter project, city officials decided their role was to lead and inform. They would identify project sites and drive forward, using neighborhood feedback to tailor improvements to a plan — but not to kill it.
It was a watershed moment of action that would echo across Sonoma County.
“We know we’re pissing off a lot of people — they’re rising up and saying, ‘Hell, no!’” said county Supervisor James Gore, president of the California State Association of Counties. “But we can’t just keep saying no. That’s been the failed housing policy of the last 30 to 40 years. Everybody wants a solution, but they don’t want to see that solution in their neighborhoods.”