City gets mixed reviews on strategy for homeless
Critics fault restrictions at new authorized tent site downtown
San Rafael’s new strategy for a homeless camp under Highway 101 is drawing both support and concern in its first weeks of operation.
While city leaders say it is designed to transition people from the streets into housing, some homeless people and activists say the sanctioned site’s rules are restrictive and difficult to follow.
Located under the freeway near Fourth Street, the fenced-off, city-sanctioned site of blue tents is one block from a camp cleared by authorities on July 6. That day, the City Council approved an ordinance banning camping in Boyd Park and city parking garages. The city swept the park of camps two days later.
The new city-sanctioned location, selected in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation because it did not require residents to relocate too far, can fit 44 shelters and expand to as many as 56 shelters as needed, according to the city.
Thirty-six sites were occupied as of Tuesday, said Lynn Murphy, mental health liaison for the San Rafael Police Department. She said the city might begin opening overflow spaces for people soon.
Mayor Kate Colin said the site is a place where people can choose to relocate and get services. Allowing people to stay in camps won’t work, she said.
The goal is to move peo
"We’re not locked in the cage, it is open, but a free-roaming prison is still a prison."
— Valeri Talbert, “service support area” occupant
ple into transitional or permanent housing using voluntary supportive services, which has been found in recent studies such as one conducted last year by the University of California at San Francisco to benefit the vast majority “of even the most impaired homeless people.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that sanctioned camps, such as the one established in San Rafael, are an interim solution “to address the immediate conditions of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness,” but are not a solution to homelessness.
“As a society and as a city we all know we need to do better … and we’re going to do that by focusing on housing plus support services,” Colin said.
Andrew Hening, the city’s former homelessness coordinator, who said he left to work full-time at a nonprofit called Opening Doors Marin, said citysanctioned sites are becoming the new strategy as the shift away from congregate shelters during COVID-19 revealed why some homeless people historically do not seek out those shelters.
Preexisting trauma is a major factor, Hening said. While homeless people might experience a trigger to their trauma in a congregate shelter, he said social workers find people are “interested in a motel room, a safe sleeping area, where they have their own tent and their own space.”
In a city-sanctioned site such as San Rafael’s, people can remain outdoors in their own space while connecting with outreach workers and potential housing. For that reason, Hening thinks that even those who don’t agree with San Rafael’s approach can support the purpose of a city site.
The police department’s Murphy is among those leading the effort to connect people to services, working with nonprofits such as Ritter Center and the Downtown Streets Team.
Anyone in the field can refer someone who is homeless either to the city’s “low-barrier” shelter or to transitional housing, both operated by Novato-based Homeward Bound. Low-barrier shelters typically waive many of the policies commonly cited as obstacles to shelter, such as sobriety requirements or complex referral and approval systems.
Murphy said several nonprofit organizations provide individual servings of food and the Salvation Army has arrived with water and leftover food.
That said, “we don’t want people to just stay within the site,” said Murphy, who said residents are encouraged to leave to visit nonprofits that provide food assistance, such as the St. Vincent de Paul dining room. Cooking and appliances are not allowed at the site because of the fire risk, she said.
Chloe Flynn, a member of Marin Youth for Justice, said her group has been bringing food to those who live in the area since May. She said they hope to place a community refrigerator there.
Bringing food to people is difficult because some volunteers have to lift supplies over the fence around the site, she said. Leaving for meals is tough, because anyone who leaves must find a place offering food and get back to the site by night to prevent losing the space, she said.
“It’s very much an inconvenience, especially when there’s so many people out there who are trying to help and trying to provide food so they don’t need to use the little money they have for food,” Flynn said.
Murphy said individually wrapped items can be brought into the site, just not bulk food items.
“For example, a Mexican restaurant in town brought mass quantities of rice, beans and tortillas at the end of their night,” she said. “There were no serving utensils and the food was set out catering style in large containers. One, this is not sanitary. Two, it is not in line with COVID-19 protocols, and three, it sat there for two days and created a massive rat problem.”
“Organizations must be approved to bring their food as we don’t want people dumping food,” Murphy said.
Mary Kay Sweeney, executive director of Homeward Bound, said the city site is “really quite helpful” because it brings people together to one location.
“I think the most important thing is when providers and outreach workers really know people and create a relationship,” she said. “That’s when we can really work well with people.”
However, Homeward Bound case managers do not come to the city site, she said. The provider operates the only low-barrier shelter, located at 3301 Kerner Blvd., while its Mill Street shelter is being renovated.
The top floor serves as a temporary shelter for up to 45 people, with mobile showers in the parking lot. Referrals are done Mondays unless immediacy is needed for veterans or people with health concerns, Sweeney said. The amount of beds available fluctuates daily, she said.
Of clients at the shelter, Sweeney said, “they’re free to come and go,” although a curfew of 10 p.m. is set. Jennifer Long, who has been staying at the city site, said she has been homeless since 2019 and recently got a Section 8 housing voucher. She said she just got a job and is glad to be staying at the
site while working on finding her own housing.
But other homeless people said the site is not enough. Activist Jason Sarris, who has been living at the homeless camp in Lee Gerner Park in Novato, said neither the city site nor the Kerner Boulevard shelter have enough spaces for all homeless in the city.
The last “point in time count” showed Marin County had 1,034 homeless people in 2019, of which 255 were in San Rafael, before the pandemic appeared to exacerbate the homelessness crisis. The number of people dying while homeless in San Rafael jumped from 19 in 2019 to 35 in 2020.
Between the two locations, there are a maximum of 101 immediately available spaces. Other beds in the county require referrals. Eventually two locations with 44 and 32 beds will be available through Homeward Bound, but will only be available by referral and aimed at serving as transitional housing, providers and the city said.
Sarris said he is frustrated that on the same day San Rafael opened the sanctioned camping site, “they had their emergency ordinance hearing” to move people from Boyd Park.
“They’re offering safety for some, but yet they’re going to criminalize the other homeless that can’t get into that camp,” he said.
Valeri Talbert, who is staying at the city site, said she and others were moved one block from where they were staying. She said she didn’t understand why they were still located under the freeway behind a fence.
“We have to go out to see anybody. We’re not locked in the cage, it is open, but a free-roaming prison is still a prison,” Talbert said.
“There’s a lot of people in town who don’t like what they see … we were as safe before as we are now,” she said. “None of this is for our benefit.”