Planning for an unsheltered winter in Sonoma Valley

Mayor Madolyn Agrimonti has real world experience with homelessness, and wants to see a plan for the north portion of Sonoma County to work in partnership to tackle the problem.

“I was homeless as a child. I went to nine schools before high school. We weren’t homeless in cars or in the streets, but we were on people’s couches, on floors,” Agrimonti said. “That’s why I’m so committed to get people housed here in Sonoma.”

Agrimonti was among several panelists of a town hall on homelessness hosted by 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin on Oct. 27.

There is economic help on the horizon, Gorin said, in the form of a $1.4 billion program called Project Homekey, which is funded by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, as well as state general funds.

“We are in a good position this year because our governor and legislature has recognized that homelessness is endemic, and we have to join together with all of you to put resources into finding appropriate housing to house our homeless and our homeless insecure population,” she said.

Dave Kiff, interim executive director of Sonoma County’s Community Development Commission said: “Project Homekey, to me, is a real game-changer in how we approach homelessness in Sonoma County and across the state.”

Kiff is familiar with Sonoma Valley’s homeless situation after serving recently as interim city manager for six months. The majority of Sonoma Valley’s homeless are white, he said, and are from the local area.

Kathy King, executive director of Sonoma Overnight Support (SOS), said that 93% of the clients her nonprofit serves are from Sonoma Valley, and that “they have family here, or were born or raised here.”

SOS served close to 700 individuals so far this year with about 25% self-identifying as homeless, but King said that number is likely higher because some people might be “too embarrassed” to label themselves as homeless. Additionally, SOS doesn’t always collect data on an individual who may have gone to the Haven for a COVID shot or some other basic service.

Cheryl Johnson, CEO of Sonoma Valley Community Health Center, said there are “different categories of unhoused people in the Valley” and that there is some “reluctance in general” to how people self-identify as being homeless.

When the health center provides services to people they ask specifically if the person is living in a homeless shelter, transitional housing, doubling up, living on the street, or living in some other situation. In 2020, 151 people identified with one of those categories, about 12.5 a month, Johnson said. This year through Sept. 30, “it’s down to about 102,” or 11.3 a month.

For the most part, Johnson said, those people have some form of substance abuse or mental health problems, but there is no one way to characterize “someone who is unhoused.”

“These numbers don’t represent the number of people who are living in multi-generational homes. We’ve had instances where we’ve had 30 people living in a two-bedroom apartment, and we know this because we’ve been there and we had to visit their homes,” Johnson said.

Agrimonti stressed getting the community educated on what homelessness is, who the people are, and how to reach them.

The systems that provide support to the homeless “are complicated,” Johnson said and needs to be streamlined.

Support ranges from food, shelter, medical and mental services, and much more, requiring “wrap around” services to help people get off the street, or for those who are housing insecure, to help them find permanent housing.

One such facility is in the works, said Annie Falandes of Homeless Action Sonoma. The transitional housing project at 18820 Sonoma Highway will consist of QuickHaven shelters that can be put together in two hours. A longer-term solution will break ground in August, 2022, she said and will be modeled after highly successful Homeward Bound of Marin.

“They have an 88% success rate” of eventually moving people into permanent housing situations, Falandes said.

“We have found that treating people as human beings and giving them an opportunity to express their wishes, it opens their hearts and makes them dare to want to succeed,” she said.

And SOS is on the hunt for more permanency, too, King said.

“We are looking for a permanent location for our wrap-around services, with a commercial kitchen, and in order to put safe parking and our laundry facilities at one site. That’s the plan,” she said.

In the short-term SOS is planning to partner with Petaluma for winter shelter, King said, especially for the inclement weather such as the storm our region experienced last weekend.

Gorin said the weather turned her thoughts to the homeless and how they were faring.

“I imagined folks huddling under bridges, feeling wet and soggy in tents, trying to seek shelter in our emergency shelters, parking in their cars and finding very little solace during this horrendous winter storm event. It gave me great pause and galvanized my efforts and all of our efforts to once again seek out solutions for homelessness,” Gorin said.

The people on the panel are all involved in some way in “seeking out solutions so that we can finally provide a comprehensive solution for our homeless residents and community members.”