Santa Rosa Sets Up 70 Tents In City Lot For Homeless

SANTA ROSA, CA — By next week, the parking lot of the Finley Community Center in West Santa Rosa will be transformed into a temporary shelter for the homeless. The city announced it is setting up as many as 70 tents in the 24,600-square-foot, city-owned lot at 2060 W. College Ave. to provide safe social distancing for people still staying in homeless encampments.

The site is expected to operate through the duration of Sonoma County's shelter-in-place order, which continues until rescinded, extended, superseded or amended.

The tents the city is providing are to be spaced 12 feet apart for social distancing. Each tent can accommodate one person or a couple. The tents are to house people who are not considered at high risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Occupants are to have access to portable toilets and hand-washing stations, with meal delivery and other services coordinated and managed onsite by Catholic Charities staff.

There will also be overnight security at the site, according to city officials.

"We are moving forward with this emergency temporary measure given the urgent need to protect the city's unsheltered homeless community as they are some of the most vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus," Mayor Tom Schwedhelm said.

"This new, managed site offers a safer, temporary option for those who have been living outdoors in situations where social distancing is challenging if not impossible," Schwedhelm said.

In mid-March when the coronavirus outbreak began to seep into the Bay Area and Sonoma County, the city says it relocated 45 high-risk residents from the Samuel L. Jones Hall Homeless Shelter to the Sandman Motel. The city says providing motel rooms for residents of the shelter who were 65 or older, or had preexisting medical conditions not only protected the vulnerable from the virus but created enough space at the shelter for proper social-distancing.

Then in late March, the city and county partnered to set up portable toilets and hand-washing stations at or near known encampments within the city to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Containers for trash and other debris were also set up near the encampments.

In mid-April, the city provided another 26 rooms at the Sandman Motel for people living in encampments but at high risk healthwise should they become infected by the virus.

The city says it has also distributed masks to people living in encampments.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report.