$2M needed to finish Homeless Action Sonoma’s tiny home shelter

Homeless Action Sonoma hoped to put up its tiny homes in time for winter, but now as leaves sprout on grapevines the organization’s Sonoma Highway property remains barren due to unexpected regulations that have slowed the nonprofit from moving its tiny homes.

On April 7, Homeless Action Sonoma submitted all of the paperwork required to move its tiny homes that are currently in a field off Napa Road, but it came at a cost — $2 million more than the $800,000 expected to grade the whole property, according to an email from HAS founder Annie Falandes.

Falandes described the process of gaining county approval as “daunting” and ”burdensome,” but Permit Sonoma Policy Manager Bradley Dunn said the hold ups to building out HAS’s Boyes Hot Springs site are to be expected.

“People that don't usually develop things often have problems developing things,” Dunn said. “Grading is complicated. Like, it really is, and it's expensive.”

HAS’s original plan was to partially grade the property to set up temporary tiny home shelters in one portion of the property to address the acute need for housing during winter, according to Falandes and boardmember Carol Allison. But regulations from the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association require the whole of the property to be graded before any structure could be put up on the property, since HAS would be required to move more than 50 cubic feet of soil.

“If you do a permanent facility, that's very different than doing a temporary facility in terms of, like, a lot of different requirements,” Dunn said.

The phased development of the property was supposed to begin with setting up the temporary tiny homes and then building the additional infrastructure needed for a permanent facility to house on-site managers and staff who would connect clients with resources. When HAS learned it would not be able to proceed with its planned stages of development, they had to hire more experts and consultants to move the project forward.

“We were ready to submit two months ago and the county then tells us that, not only do we need structural engineering stamps on the permit applications, but we also need architectural stamps on the permit applications,” Falandes wrote in an email to the Sonoma City Council. “Every time the plans change, it costs more and delays us more. The goal post keeps moving and my frustration keeps growing.”

Falandes said the stormwater association’s requirements demand retaining walls and a stormwater runoff system for the property, which would require the basic infrastructure of a permanent facility to be engineered first.

“We thought that we could just come in and... could just level the land, as long as we didn't move more than 50 cubic feet, and put up the small houses,” Falandes said, “Then Permit Sonoma came back and said they felt that this would trigger a BASMAA requirement — which means that we could not do that.”

But the “goal post” of BASMAA requirements, Dunn said, never moved. It is a state regulation, Dunn said, and HAS would need to comply with those regulations in order to protect the local water supply from any runoff that may occur from the property.

Still, grading the full property is required “sooner than we thought we would,” Allison said. HAS officials were confused about what they would be able to build on the site based on their designs and planning in conjunction with the necessary requirements.

“It's not necessarily that we didn't expect to have to do these things for the permanent facility,” Allison said. “We didn't expect to have to do them before the temporaries could go up.”

The grading of the whole property would have happened no matter what, Falandes said, but to grade the whole property first — in addition to paying for consultants’ fees — shifted more of the budget to the front end of the development process.

“Permit Sonoma has offered to help Homeless Action Sonoma throughout their permitting process,” Dunn said. “But development in California is complicated... And their decision to build their own tiny homes drove up their price.”

In the meantime, Falandes said HAS plans to hold fundraising events to raise the $2 million dollars needed before the organization relocates its tiny home shelters. HAS expects to be awarded grants from California’s Homekey project to help support the development of its facility in Boyes Hot Springs, next to Baker & Cook.

But until then, the headache of planning won’t be relieved.

“They're rule players,” Falandes said about Permit Sonoma. “I mean, they've been very helpful and very kind. But they're used to dealing with professionals, and we're not a professional organization in that way.”

Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.