The sky was threatening, but the rain held off on Thursday for the open house at Gravenstein Commons, the new permanent supportive housing complex across from the Redwood Marketplace in north Sebastopol. The event also celebrated the partnership between Saint Vincent de Paul Sonoma County and COTS, a Petaluma-based homeless housing and services organization. Saint Vincent de Paul Sonoma County is the developer and owner of the property, while COTS will provide on-site property management and case management.
The open house ran from 2 pm to 5 pm, but volunteers from several local organizations, including Rebuilding Together, the Healthy Room Project, St. Vincent de Paul, the Sebastopol Police and others, were busy for hours putting together furniture for the 22 studio apartments.
At 2 pm, everything was cleaned up and pristine. Saint Vincent de Paul Sonoma County Director Lauren Taylor looked around the complex in amazement. “It did not look like this two hours ago,” she said.
There was a steady stream of visitors, including neighbors, volunteers, and several Sebastopol Council members. During my visit, I saw Councilmembers Sandra Maurer, Phill Carter and Stephen Zollman checking out the new digs, which were simple but quite nice.
Visitors wandered around the property, checking out the rooms. Each studio apartment has a bathroom and a small kitchenette with a two-burner stove, as well as a bed, a couch, an armoire, a small kitchen table, a dresser and a bedside table.
Like all new developments, the rooms felt a bit austere, but in one room, three women stood around a pile of handmade afghans and quilts that they and their friends had made to warm things up.
“We have a group called the Crafty Ladies that has been in operation since 2009, and we make these afghans and quilts and things for people in COTS and Life Pregnancy Services for babies,” said Christine Tighe.
Gesturing to her friends, she said, “These ladies are part of the group too, but they’re also part of St. Vincent de Paul, and when they told us about this being open, the idea was that we could make an afghan for every room for when the people moved in. Some are quilts, some are crocheted and some are knitted.”
There is no common room in the complex, but there is a spacious gravel and landscaped plaza in the centre of the development that St. Vincent de Paul’s Taylor said she hopes will be developed into a kind of communal space, perhaps with a gazebo. “That’s the vision for this space,” she said.
There were also a few local unhoused people looking around the property.
Brandy McCuan, a young woman who just got out of the hospital and is currently living in her car in Sebastopol, leaned on her cane and looked around hopefully. “I’m trying to get in here, get my coordinated entry updated, and get all that,” she said. “I’m hoping.”
With Brandy was Kathleen Robbiano, a volunteer from the Saint Vincent de Paul chapter at St. Sebastian’s Catholic Church in Sebastopol.
‘I invited her to come to the open house so she could see the place,” Robbiano said. “She grew up in Sebastopol. So what I’m trying to do is encourage her to keep on top of her coordinated entry status, because that’s the way people get into housing. I wanted to help her just be known to the people who are running the project.
“I’m just trying to help her stay connected to the right resources in hopes that at some point that could be her home,” said Robbiano, who has volunteered at other St. Vincent de Paul homeless housing properties and is not naive about the complications of a property like this.
Still, she said, speaking of the new development, “I think it’s a welcoming environment. I was really happy with the staff I met there.”
Neighbor Christopher Ayars, who lives just down the street, was also impressed with Gravenstein Commons. “This is gorgeous. I mean, really nice,” he said. “What they’ve done is they’ve made a place where someone can start again, and then they provide the help too; you have a case manager on site. I’m so happy about this.”
COTS director Cabral explained what those wraparound services looked like: “We have a case manager here on site seven days a week. We also have a property manager on site seven days a week. It’s generally during business hours for the case managers, but the property manager lives here. We also have security from 6 pm to 6 am, Monday through Friday, and 24 hours on Saturday and Sunday.”
Cabral said COTS planned to start moving in new residents, a few at a time, starting in mid-November.
“We want to stagger it out and give people an opportunity to really enjoy the community and really get to know the surroundings and settle in with their smaller numbers,” she said.
One group of people I didn’t see as I walked around the property—though they may have come later—were the former residents of Horizon Shine, the RV Village that was once located on this same spot.
Early in the development process of Gravenstein Commons, the former St. Vincent de Paul director, Jack Tibbetts, had suggested that some rooms could be set aside for Horizon Shine residents. That turned out not to be the case.
Some former Horizon Shine residents, like Jennifer Apodaca and Ronda Scott, are trying to organize so that former Horizon Shine residents will be considered for inclusion at Gravenstein Commons.
“The system is messed up,” Scott said. “There’s only a handful of us…but instead they’re bringing people in from outside of Sebastopol. And if they don’t work out, guess what happens? They end up on the streets of Sebastopol.”
Scott realizes, however, that it’s hard to fight a bureaucracy—especially one where the rules and funding come down from Washington, D.C.
“There’s no prioritizing them, frankly,” said Taylor, speaking of the old Horizon Shine residents. Cabral agreed.
As per HUD requirements, the rooms were being filled strictly on the basis of the coordinated entry system, which ranks people on their level of vulnerability: so the longtime homeless, seniors, people with disabilities (including physical and mental disabilities), women with children, get first priority. Some of the old Horizon Shine residents may qualify under these auspices, but they won’t get priority based on having lived on the property before Gravenstein Commons was built.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that 22 individuals who desperately need housing and supportive services will soon find them here at this bright, nicely designed facility, which—though years in the making—is finally complete.
Definitely a feel-good story after all the controversy.