This is Part 2 of a two-part article. You can read Part 1 here.
At the last city council meeting, the council discussed three agenda items related to homelessness: Gravenstein Commons, a Good Neighbor Policy for homeless housing, and the city’s homeless outreach contracts.
Who will be chosen for Gravenstein Commons?
After St. Vincent de Paul and COTS gave their presentation on Gravenstein Commons, the council moved into question and Councilmember Zollman was first out of the gate, pressing the speakers on how the city could be involved in the choice of residents for Gravenstein Commons.
COTS Executive Director Chris Cabral explained that all of the residents for Gravenstein Commons will ultimately have to be approved through Coordinated Entry, a complex rating system designed to match homeless individuals to available supportive housing programs. (See our in-depth article from 2025 on the Coordinated Entry system.)
“There will be an opportunity, when the project is set up for Coordinated Entry referrals, for the providers (St. Vincent de Paul, Coordinated Entry, City of Sebastopol, all the partners) to come together to discuss eligibility factors and criteria … It would be at that point, when setting up resident criteria for selection through Coordinated Entry, that the city would have input.”
Kaitlin Johnson-Carney, the Coordinated Entry Director for HomeFirst (the contractor that runs Coordinated Entry for the county) noted that one of the criteria could be that individuals would have to come from the West County By Names List — a list of homeless people known to live in the West County.
“In terms of the West County By Name List, it is fully up to COTS or Saint Vincent de Paul to make the eligibility criteria that is allowed for their funding, and part of that can definitely be that folks need to be on the West County By Names List in order to qualify for a referral in the first place.”
She emphasized that while city representatives could help draw up the criteria, they could not choose individual people for housing at Gravenstein Commons.
“In terms of selecting individual households to move in, that would be incredibly unusual,” Johnson-Carney said, noting this involves personal, protected information. “We don’t have any other projects that jurisdictions they’re located within do that.”
Most of the councilmembers seemed pleased with the presentation, but Mayor Jill McLewis remained skeptical, noting her experience as a business neighbor with the permanent supportive housing residents from Elderberry.
A Good Neighbor Policy
At its Sept. 2 council meeting last year, the council gave direction to City Attorney Alex Mog to prepare a “Good Neighbor Policy” ordinance to help foster positive relationships between homeless housing providers and the Sebastopol community. He returned last week with a policy modelled after policies adopted by the city of San Francisco, Catholic Charities and the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition.
The policy had three parts:
Establishing tenant rules and expectations and training the tenants on those rules.
Mandatory neighborhood patrols to address tenant behavioral issues as well as physical conditions (such as trash removal)
Community engagement, including posted contact information, procedures for responding to complaints, and quarterly community meetings.
Mayor Zollman asked for reactions to these rules from St. Vincent de Paul Executive Director Lauren Taylor and COTS ED Chris Cabral. Both disliked the provision that providers walk the surrounding neighborhoods to pick up trash or Gravenstein Commons residents sleeping on the sidewalk.
“A lot of language in here, like under residents and rules and expectations, is just standard stuff that’s in a lease. I don’t have a problem with that,” Chris Cabral of COTS said. “I do think patrolling the surrounding neighborhood—I understand the intent—but there’s not enough funding in projects to do that.”
Here is the full section of the ordinance they objected to:
The housing provider, or a security agency hired by the housing provider, shall conduct patrols of surrounding neighborhood during both the daytime and nighttime hours to ensure that participants are not:
Obstructing access to sidewalks or storefronts or creating repeated neighborhood disruption;
Engaging in public drug use, excessive noise, intimidation, and other disruptive behavior in the vicinity of the project site; or
otherwise violating program rules. The patrols shall provide reminders and coaching to program participants regarding community expectations.
Cabral noted the lack of specificity in the word “neighborhood.”
“I don’t know what that means: a block, six blocks, a mile?” she said. “That makes a big difference. I would say 300 feet of the site frontage, removing litter and debris. It [Gravenstein Commons] is right next door to a liquor store. Not every piece of debris that comes from an area like that is going to be from residents that live at this site.”
She also noted that permanent supportive housing facilities could simply not afford the 24/7 security this “day and night” wording would require.
Vice Mayor Maurer asked, on behalf of a constituent, if this level of oversight didn’t smack of surveillance.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a surveillance of the residents at all,” Mog said. “I think it’s expectations for the housing providers about how they will operate with regard to the community. There’s nothing in here about them having to track what residents are doing 24/7. It’s about expectations about how the operators will engage with the broader community, especially in the vicinity.”
Mayor McLewis’ comment on the previous presentation seems germane here: Speaking of Elderberry Commons, which is close to her business, she said, “I have had a front-row seat to what has gone on there. And when you ask about, like, ‘Why are we worried about people lying around?’ That’s because a woman has laid in the parking lot and on the sidewalk on fentanyl for days on end, and the people who managed that property said it’s not their problem. We should not treat human beings like that. Everyone else was calling and trying to take care of it, but the people who were running that site were not taking care of those people, and that is not how we should treat people.”
At first, Vice Mayor Maurer suggested bringing the ordinance back in the future after the Gravenstein Commons providers had a chance to review it.
“If we want Saint Vincent de Paul [and COTS] to actually sign on, we should ask them to collaborate to make edits that make sense because we want their buy-in,” she argued.
Mayor Zollman made a motion to that effect. Councilmembers Hinton and Carter declined to support this motion, which made Vice Mayor Maurer reconsider her support for bringing the measure back.
In the end, the Good Neighbor Policy did not move forward. Zollman’s motion to bring it back at a future date failed on a 3-2 vote, with Zollman and McLewis in favor and Hinton, Carter and Maurer opposed.
City renews contracts with its two current homeless outreach providers
The city has two Homeless Outreach providers: West County Community Services and, more recently, a county program called HEART. Each gave a presentation about their services.
Christy Davila opened with a history of the long relationship between WCCS and Sebastopol, noting that their homeless outreach services started with the massive encampment on Joe Rodota in 2018-2020 and the RV parking problem on Morris Street. “The city was looking for a response and contracted for a full-time outreach person in the first year with us, and then in the four years following, we continued to provide services.” They then dropped to half-time. Their contract with the city ended in June. Davila was unable to provide statistics due to both a spreadsheet formula error and over-reporting by an outreach worker. She apologized for the errors and lack of oversight that allowed that to happen.
Hunter Scott, the new Deputy Division Director of Homelessness Services for the Sonoma County Department of Health Services, gave a report on the HEART program, a county pilot program that provides a half-time outreach person for the Sebastopol area. It is currently paid for by the county. “So in December of last year, we started a wonderful new outreach pilot with the city of Sebastopol and the police department, where they are pairing outreach with law enforcement response—and more accurately to really replace a law enforcement response where that’s appropriate—and create pathways to services with a goal of increasing coordination around homelessness and helping people move from contact to meaningful service.” He credited HEART’s outreach worker, Julian Sanchez, saying, “He’s engaged 67 people (30 of those are active in Coordinated Entry), made 12 shelter placements, and moved three folks into housing. It does take time to build relationships with folks, and so we expect those numbers to increase over time.” He noted the importance of coordinating better with the WCCS outreach worker to ensure there weren’t duplications. He also noted that the DHS had recently broken down the county into subregions (including West County), with a manager for each subregion, with the goal of creating a ‘By Names List’ for each subregion and action plans for every homeless person on those lists.
Councilmember Hinton said she was disappointed in the report from WCCS. “I want to send a really clear message that I heard apologies about lack of oversight, and that’s hard to hear actually when we’re paying for services. And I think I would be remiss if I didn’t say it out loud because we’re going into another contract tonight.”
Mayor McLewis echoed these thoughts. “I’m just disappointed to hear that we’ve been receiving all these reports all this time, and they’re not accurate.” She expressed a desire to take the $40,000 slated for the WCCS contract and use it for something that might be more effective. “I expect more for our taxpayers’ dollars,” she said.
Although Hinton looked torn, the council voted 4 to 1 (McLewis dissenting) to approve both the contract with WCCS and the extension of the MOU with the county for HEART.