Giant homeless camp cleared out
Merry Potter surveyed the soggy mound of bags, blankets, pans and clothes laid out on a tarp around her and heaved a tired sigh. She had until the end of the day to stuff everything she needed into two 80gallon plastic tubs, and then it was off to a tiny home a few miles from where she stood.
“This is good,” she told herself several times. “It’s going to be better to be out of here. This has truly sucked.”
It was moving day Friday for 28yearold Potter and the 60 or so other homeless people left at the sprawling homeless camp on Joe Rodota Trail in Santa Rosa.
County officials set Friday as the final date for people to vacate the trail camp, which since last summer had grown to a garbageladen, 2mile spread of about 300 homeless people along the popular walking and biking trail on county park land that parallels Highway 12. The biggest homeless camp in county history, it rankled neighbors, anguished activists, sparked political tensions over how to handle the mess — and became a symbol of how acutely homelessness has spread beyond the big cities. Health and shelter counselors have been trolling it since October offering shelter and transitional housing spots.
Most homeless residents at the trail appeared to be happy at the chance to trade their rainbattered tents and tarps for a chance at a shelter bed. For Potter, that meant a coveted spot at the 60unit tiny home village set up this past week in east Santa Rosa outside the Los Guilicos juvenile detention facility. For others, it would be a bed in church or governmental shelters. And for yet
others, it meant just toting their bags and tents away to find another camping spot, most likely downtown or in any of dozens of woodsy spots already wellknown to the homeless in Sonoma County.
Those who did not voluntarily leave by day’s end would have received citations for illegally camping on the trail, park and police officials said. But by 4:30 p.m., the settlement was empty, and no citations or arrests had been made. Park rangers pulled a gate to the trail closed, and that was the end of that.
Throughout the day, a sense of resigned calm pervaded the camp, with dozens of sanitation workers, park rangers, and county health, housing and counseling workers bagging up belongings headed to storage — each person got two 80gallon tubs they could store nearby at county expense — and helping campers with transportation to shelter. One by one, or in small groups, the homeless people filtered away from the trail on foot, on bike or pushing shopping carts.
Several tons of trash, tents, clothing and the other detritus of an abandoned camp lay heaped along the trail, waiting for sanitation workers to haul away — a job expected to take several days. Scores of tents were left behind, still filled with clothing and books and bikes — but no people.
Homelessaid workers had only about half the beds they needed to accommodate everyone who’s been on the trail, despite adding six drug detox beds on Friday. But with many people simply opting to drift away to new camping spots over the past week, that wound up appearing to be enough.
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in December dedicated $11.6 million to provide housing, shelter and services toward moving the campers, and the $2 million Los Guilicos village was the first big step in spending that money. Eighty new shelter beds are planned to replace the village in April — or perhaps augment it — and the county is working on master leasing and buying permanent housing units. It’s also procuring a yettobedetermined amount of federal rent vouchers.
The hope was to put a roof over everyone who wanted to take one, said county spokesman Rohish Lal. And that, in fact, was mandated by a federal court injunction issued in August in a lawsuit filed over the previous biggest camp — a 150person spread behind a Dollar Tree store about a mile away from the current camp, dismantled in 2018. That order prevented officials from rousting settlements unless they had shelter and belongings storage for everyone being moved.
County officials believed the $11.6 million package of provisions, along with shelter spots among the county’s existing stock of nearly 1,000 beds, met the federal order, so they set Friday as the final date for clearing the trail. Housed residents had complained so much in recent months about vermin, theft, disruption and filth in and around the camp that the Board of Supervisors in December declared a public health emergency on the trail.
“We’re helping everyone we can, but a lot more people just moved out last night without telling anyone and we probably won’t be able to track them,” Lal said Friday evening. “Overall, we’re really pleased with how this went, but it’s step one. This doesn’t stop with shelter. Now we have to work on housing.”
For exasperated neighbors, the end of Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
“Finally! All of us are so happy now to see this,” said Giedrius Martinaitis, 37, whose home backs up to the trail camp. “The mess they have made is terrible. The trash, the rats, the noise, the screaming, the needles. All of it was so bad we couldn’t walk the kids there.
“We still won’t be able to go on the trail until they clear away all that trash. I just hope they keep an eye on it so those campers don’t all come back.”
Steve Floyd, 33, said in the morning that he would not voluntarily leave his tent spot, but at 4:30 p.m. he became the last person to leave the camp.
“I was going to stick it out, but then decided, hey I’d rather not go to jail,” said Floyd, who’s been homeless for seven years, and on the trail camp since September. “I just can’t stand to go to any of those shelters they have. It would be another cell to me. I’ve already got a couple of camping spots picked out.
“If someone would give me a place where I could build my own house, I’d go there,” he said. “But until then I’ll just take care of myself.”
For Potter, the tiny village is a lifeline.
“I’ve been homeless for seven years, and living out here has been very hard,” she said. “I’m a single woman, and you have to fend for yourself. I’ve gotten hit in the head, robbed of my purse and phone. Even the scrapbooks I’ve made for friends who passed away — someone stole those.
“I think this tiny home thing is a new chance. Three days ago those counselors on the trail hooked me up with a Section 8 housing voucher, and I think I’ve found some places I could move to soon. I’ve finally got some hopes for things turning around.”
Kathleen Finigan, a member of the Homeless Action activist group that has been fighting for aid from the county for the camp, said she thought the county handled clearing the Joe Rodata Trail better than sweeping the one at Dollar Tree in 2018. That action resulted in scores being ushered out with no place to go.
“The fact is, it never should have come to this,” Finigan said. “Homelessness in Sonoma County is a problem that’s been here for years. Enough permanent housing for all these people won’t be built for several more years, and the fire victims of the past couple of years come first and the chronically homeless come last.
“We’ve turned these people into an American caste of untouchables, created a new underclass. That is deplorable.”
County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who helped shepherd creation of the Los Guilicos village, agreed about the longevity of the problem.
“The county didn’t create this situation overnight,” she said. “It’s been a perfect storm for 40 years of no housing growth, unaffordability, not enough treatment for mental illness and substance abuse, a really vicious cycle. And we won’t solve it overnight. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that each life that breathes easier with shelter, food and safety — that in itself is a miracle.”