Sebastopol can’t afford the County Plan to house more homeless people in our city.
It is difficult to write about the issues created by the homeless and those in permanent suppor�ve housing and safe parking villages without hearing the cries of NIMBY. We need to get real about the fact that homelessness and even providing permanent suppor�ve housing brings with it numerous issues that require ac�ve management and that management costs money.
Sebastopol is learning these issues in real �me. Elderberry Commons was promised to bring no issues to Sebastopol. Many of us have experienced the meaning of “no issues” as we are verbally assaulted while trying to enjoy coffee and pastry at a local business. These problems hurt local businesses and sales tax revenues decline, increasing pressure on city budgets.
The police blogs indicate significant increases in crime, some serious near Horizon Shine that was not present before. The fact that SAVS, a�er almost two years, has had very limited success ge�ng individuals into a more permanent housing solu�on demonstrates how difficult these problems can be to solve, even if you throw “boat loads” of money at the problem.
Sebastopol is effec�vely a social services desert. There are no facili�es here to provide public health or mental health services. We no longer have a hospital or emergency facili�es. We employ no social workers and have no temporary shelter facili�es. The City Council has discussed trading police services for mental health workers, but we don’t seem to have a surplus of police services to trade given the increase in retail the� and a new outbreak of youth violence in our parks.
Even though we have no services and ge�ng to services from Sebastopol is challenging at best, the county decided to make Sebastopol and Elderberry Commons a cornerstone of their permanent suppor�ve housing program. The county does seem to be abdica�ng responsibility as it has “donated” our hotel, paid for by taxpayers, to the non-profit Burbank Housing. Another non-profit, St Vincent De Paul is drawing up plans to further expand the permanent suppor�ng housing op�ons using the Horizon Shine site.
This is all going on with the understanding that if these individuals need any services at all they are going to have to drive, walk, bike or bus to Santa Rosa. Without access to care, treatment, and medica�ons there will be issues. The situa�on becomes more difficult to manage and costs to deal with it locally go up.
In the business world it would be unusual for a developer to build a train sta�on in a community without train tracks. It seems unlikely that a winery would establish a vineyard on land without water.
Somehow, we need to get the County to see that Sebastopol is not the answer to their permanent suppor�ve housing problem.
Sebastopol has the highest concentra�on of “homeless” in the County. If we con�nue to let the County send us their problems, we are increasingly going to find our declared financial crisis is indeed one that cannot be solved.