Homelessness crisis worsens in Petaluma

The 35 acres of land between the Mary Isaak Center and the Petaluma River may be vacant, but they are not deserted. There are signs of life along the riverbank.

Homeless camps are as prevalent as police Lt. Tim Lyons has ever seen. As he walked through one encampment near the Highway 101 overpass, he spotted a collapsed tent that had been stretched out by large branches to create just enough cover for someone to fit underneath. Moldy area rugs were laid purposefully across the ground. Lumpy garbage bags and trash littered the camp.

Facing the McNear Channel was a toilet frame with evidence beneath it that someone had been here recently.

City officials estimate Petaluma’s unsheltered population is nearly 300, but the police department contends that number is even higher since the agency’s ongoing staffing shortage forced it to shut down the Homeless Outreach Services Team earlier this year.

Zilverio Rivera, one of the two officers in the unit that was moved back to patrol duty full-time, said the 33 camps that they had at one point completely disbanded are almost entirely back in operation just a few months later.

“Unfortunately the homeless issue is one of those challenges that if we’re not gaining ground on it, we’re losing ground on it,” Rivera said. “The homeless population continues to grow.”

At the same time, Petaluma’s principal homeless service provider, the Committee on the Shelterless, is working through growing pains as it actively transitions to a housing-first model that’s not only changed its policies and procedures, but also its perception on the streets.

Within an earshot of COTS’ Mary Isaak Center, hidden behind the tall grass between Hopper Street and the railroad tracks, three friends have turned a desk chair and a small tent into a temporary home. They’re hoping to get off the waiting list for a bed at the facility, where demand spikes in the colder months.

A few blocks away, behind the Lucky store, RVs and campers have become a familiar sight on the eastern end of Payran Street. Connie Papazian, 65, said she has been homeless for nine months, fleeing an abusive ex-husband in Texas.

She’s been staying in the RV with a friend “for just a couple days” after maxing-out her stay at COTS. Her current fiancé is in jail, and she said she can’t work because of an ongoing disability affecting her bladder.

Sleeping in vehicles on public streets is illegal in Petaluma, but the understaffed police department doesn’t have the manpower to actively enforce the ordinance, Lyons said. Motorhomes are popping up more frequently in industrial zones, especially since Santa Rosa has ramped up efforts to shut down its homeless camps, pushing some of its transient population south to Petaluma.

Many of the vehicle owners have been reportedly dumping waste into the nearby storm drains. Criminal activity has significantly increased in this area.

At Cedar Grove Park, another riverside location about a mile away, a small camp has formed near an abandoned house that’s been tagged so many times that the graffiti is more prevalent than its original yellow finish. As smoke billowed from a fire started inside a hollowed out cement porch beside it, three men scattered from the area as Lyons approached. Like every stop on the hazy November morning, all the veteran officer wanted to do was make sure everyone was OK.

He spotted a well-built camp in the distance with a familiar face inhabiting it. Nelani Felli, 48, who boasts a lengthy criminal record, was wearing a chain with a handcuff key. He laughed with Lyons like he was catching up with an old friend.

“I’ve always had a place to stay,” Felli said. “With my parole, I can’t really work ‘cause I’ve got an ankle monitor. I’ve walked away from many jobs. In fact, I can’t even get a full-time job now because this is a full-time job,” he said, pointing to his campsite.

Felli’s parole officer forced him to wear the ankle monitor because he refuses to stay with COTS, he said. “I don’t want to be around people … I put myself in situations where I set myself up for failure.”

Farther down the river and in pockets along the Lynch Creek Trail, the transient camps become larger and more populated. They’re protected by dense tree cover and are difficult to access on foot. As a result, garbage is accumulating at hazardous levels.

“It’s too bad,” Lyons said as he walked away from Felli’s camp. “You wish he’d get out of that cycle.”

Unable to HOST

The city’s homeless outreach team was funded by a two-year, $500,000 grant from CalRecycle that helped pay Rivera’s salary and elevated the overall effectiveness of the unit, which was started in January 2016 after officer Ryan DeBaeke lobbied for its formation. Unofficially, the two men began tackling the issue through their patrol work, dating back to 2010.

Thanks to the grant, DeBaeke and Rivera were able to divert most of their hours to policing Petaluma’s homeless population. The PPD purchased a custom-made boat for navigating the Petaluma River during the rainier months, and had two all-terrain vehicles that made the entire landscape accessible.

The purpose of HOST was to abate Petaluma’s transient sites by using a service-oriented approach. The two officers made repeated contact at the city’s 33 encampments, posting signs to notify occupants that they had 1-2 weeks to vacate before being arrested.

On a follow-up visit, they would usually return with representatives from local shelters like COTS’ lead outreach specialist Randy Clay, introducing the population to services available to help them with gaining housing, sobriety and employment.

After the site had been vacated, it often took three to four more visits to finish the abatement process, Rivera said.

The program was a success, with every camp eliminated inside city limits. The two officers emphasized respect and civility, and took pride in remembering the names and stories of everyone they made contact with.

“It was a positive experience to contact someone sleeping on a field under the influence, move that person through working with them collaboratively with community service, to get them to an environment where they were sober,” Rivera said. “You can’t arrest your way out of a homeless problem.”

Clay said having the uniformed HOST officers also made it easier to get the homeless population to embrace their services. Rather than avoiding the public due to outstanding legal trouble or a debilitating addiction, having the police make first contact incentivized them to genuinely reevaluate their situation.

“They would give those options,” Clay said. “It would allow them to take a look at what’s going on in their lives and take the services that were being offered. The uniform itself made the difference, where initially they would turn it down and say, ‘I’ll stay out here.’”

But in June, the grant funding ran out. With the police department struggling to maintain basic services during its worst staffing shortage in decades, HOST was one of several specialized units to get cut.

In its absence, Rivera estimated 30 camps they once shut down have now come back to life. And until the department can identify funding to restart the unit, whether it’s through another grant or a voter-approved public safety tax, homelessness will persist.

“It’s disappointing to see the work that me and Ryan did on that, to see it undone because it is actively being undone with each day we don’t stay on it,” Rivera said. “It’s also, from a perspective of what’s good for the city and people of Petaluma, we spent a great deal from the grant to fix a significant problem.”

Complex growing pains

In September 2017, COTS made a series of sweeping changes as it tried to take a more bottom-up approach to treating its clients, emphasizing what’s best for the majority of local shelter-seekers.

The Mary Isaak Center was built in 2004 as a so-called wet shelter, which meant clients could be under the influence as long as they weren’t using on the premises. At that time, COTS employed a linear residential system that addressed mental health, income and substance abuse issues before placing a client into a home.

The sobriety-first model came with a host of challenges, though, so COTS later became dry shelter and began drug-testing applicants. As a result, many people were often screened out.

Those in the homeless service industry say a shelter is meant to be a last resort, and the one commonality between every prospective client is the lack of a home. Rather than allowing substance abuse to become a barrier, COTS then switched back to a wet house last year as it adopted the housing-first model.

The idea is that once a client has been safely housed, through COTS’ services and its community partners, they can tackle any mental health or substance abuse issues after they’ve put a roof over their head. As clients work toward that objective, they’re also entitled to one of the 99 beds at the center for however long that takes – whether it’s one week, one month or one year.

“It’s all about people learning to use their voice and asking for what they need,” Clay said. “That’s why I go into the community and find ways to engage them and find out how they can use our resources.”

Still, the transition has not been easy.

Many in the homeless population are wary of COTS, worried the potential proximity to drugs and alcohol at a wet shelter would make it impossible to overcome their addiction.

“Their purpose is to rehouse people,” said Kyle Kruger, one of the people sleeping by the train tracks. “As far as it goes, a lot of people are getting rehoused, but a lot of people are also reverting to things they don’t want to do.”

COTS staffers point out there are two sides to that. Lynea Seiberlich-Wheeler, a licensed clinical social worker at the center of the nonprofit’s latest shift, said there’s a level of acceptance and transparency that has empowered staff members to make better decisions for their clients.

“Folks who have never before come inside are coming inside and staying long enough that they can get a few things figured out in their life,” Seiberlich-Wheeler said. “At the same time, some folks are really sensitive to their environment and what’s going on around them. Some are struggling to maintain health … which wasn’t the case before when there were strict rules.”

Finding the right balance is difficult, she said, and the nonprofit is actively working on “internal programs” to reduce those anxieties.

To comply with federal regulations, Sonoma County officials also adopted a coordinated entry system for accessing shelter services. While the goal is to streamline efficiency, executing it has been difficult, Seiberlich-Wheeler said.

Prospective clients have to contact the coordinated entry system and undergo an assessment based on various vulnerabilities. For example, do they have a place to sleep, access to income, or are there any pressing health needs. The most vulnerable applicants are approved faster while others get wait-listed, which was the case for Kruger.

The problem with centralizing the intake process is that shelters have less autonomy, and the lack of housing relief means there are fewer places to advance their clients.

“We didn’t, as a community, get any more houses with this coordinated entry system,” Seiberlich-Wheeler said. “What has happened is we’ve created a bit of a funnel. Now everybody goes to one place to sign up and then there still isn’t enough for everybody. So we have a better eye on the problem of a lack of housing, and less control over who’s coming in and out of our shelters.”

The city currently has a less than 2 percent vacancy rate for rental housing, according to a housing survey conducted in April. Countywide, residents have shown a willingness to adapt, with 21,482 individuals precariously housed in temporary situations. Nearly 40 percent of that total lost their home during the October 2017 wildfires.

“I thought that was great (switching to a housing-first model), but we knew we needed to have all the necessary resources in place to make that transition happen smoothly,” Clay said. “It’s not going to happen in a few weeks. It’s going to take a few years.”

A large injection of capital is also in the works.

On Nov. 5, the Petaluma City Council declared a shelter crisis, as have neighboring city councils and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

By doing so, Petaluma will now be eligible for a share of $500 million in federal funds through the Homeless Emergency Aid Program. The county is estimated to receive $12 million over the next two years.

Local officials said COTS, as the city’s main homeless facility, will likely receive the bulk of Petaluma’s split.

“I think this is important work,” Seiberlich-Wheeler said, “and I’m glad to participate.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)