RV dwellers scramble to find new places to live and/or park their RVs
City will start enforcing its RV parking ordinance on Monday, Jan. 6
On Friday, Jan. 3, three Sebastopol police officers arrived at the RV encampment on Highway 116 and handed out flyers about the impending enforcement of Sebastopol’s Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance. They went from RV to RV, alerting residents that their year-long illegal tenancy on this stretch of highway was about to end.
According to the flyer, the Sebastopol Police will start ticketing RVs and other cars on Monday, Jan. 6. This action follows a Nov. 22 court decision supporting Sebastopol’s parking ordinance and denying the claims of an ACLU (et al) lawsuit against it.
According to the ordinance, RV parking is prohibited at all times on residential streets in Sebastopol and is allowed in commercial or industrial zones only between 10 pm and 7 am. Former mayor Diana Rich, who voted for the RV ordinance in March 2022, called it a “compassionate compromise” that allows people to sleep in Sebastopol in their RVs, but not set up permanent encampments.
The flyer also said that no vehicle of any type may be parked in the same location for over 72 hours. These rules apply to all residents of Sebastopol, not just homeless people.
According to the flyer, “If you violate these regulations, you may be fined and/or your vehicle may be towed.”
The Sebastopol City Council first passed the RV parking ordinance in March 2022. Except for an early crackdown on RV parking on Morris Street, the ordinance has never been enforced due to the lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other civil rights organizations on behalf of three former inhabitants of Horizon Shine, the homeless RV village run by Sonoma Applied Village Services (SAVS).
When Horizon Shine closed in March 2024, several of its RV residents, who couldn’t or wouldn’t be placed elsewhere, simply parked on the street outside the closed facility.
In December, Angie Sebring, a resident of one of the RVs and a former Horizon Shine resident, spoke at a Sebastopol City Council meeting asking for the city to give RV residents plenty of notice and whatever help the city could offer to get them ready to move.
A 30-day notice was given on Dec. 6, Sebring said, but until this week, no help was offered from any quarter. In fact, Sebring said to her knowledge there had been no outreach to the RV encampment since Sebastopol’s Homeless Outreach Coordinator Maria Rico left her job with West County Community Services on Sept. 12.
Sebring, a former computer programmer, is a member of the LEAP (“Lived Experience Advisory Planning”) Board for the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition, a HUD-funded agency that oversees local efforts to deal with homelessness in the county. She was not a party to the ACLU lawsuit.
“I really think that the city council should have waited until there was outreach in place before they issued the 30-day notice,” Sebring said.
In the absence of any official aid, Sebring began ringing the alarm bells in early December, calling homelessness-related agencies around the county, asking for help for her fellow RV residents along 116.
She reached out to West County Community Services, the Interdepartmental Multidisciplinary Team of Sonoma County, Police Chief Ron Nelson, Justin Milligan of Sonoma County Legal Aid, and everyone on the Sebastopol City Council.
She heard back from everyone, she said, except the members of the city council. She especially commended Chief Nelson, who she said had been uniformly helpful and compassionate throughout this whole process.
After Sebring reached out, West County Community Services’ new homeless outreach worker Faviola Ledezma appeared on Monday, Dec. 30—a week before the deadline—to speak to each of the residents about what they needed to move and where they were going to go.
The one group Sebring didn’t call was SAVS, the former managers of Horizon Shine.
“SAVS washed their hands of us,” Sebring said.
According to SAVS director Adrienne Lauby, SAVS has no plans to help place or help move the RV dwellers on Highway 116. “Our work in Sebastopol ended June 30. Of course, we still check in with folks occasionally, but we have no formal role there now.”
In fairness, SAVS staff say they worked hard last winter trying to find alternative housing for the residents of Horizon Shine before the village closed down. Some of those residents refused placement offers because they were too far away from their jobs or they’d have had to give up their RVs—something many homeless individuals view as a lifeline. Placements were also delayed for months because SAVS staff neglected to add Horizon Shine residents to the Coordinated Entry database that controls which homeless individuals get housing.
At the Starbucks across the street from the RV encampment, Sebring, who is currently employed doing elder care, gave a rundown of the status of the RVs on the street.
One trailer was moved this week to an empty RV parking spot at Park Village Mobile Home Park, which is run by West County Community Services. That move had been in the works for several months, Sebring said.
Several other residents are getting ready to leave, but they have no idea where they’ll go. “Vehicle registration as well as repairs are a limiting factor,” Sebring said.
Sebring plans on moving her RV on Sunday—though she also is not sure yet where she will go.
“Shelters have waiting lists, and with no outreach since September, there is little choice in the matter,” she said. “The last three months of no contact with any agency has left everyone completely on their own.”
Asked what she expected to happen on Jan. 6, she said, “On Monday, I expect people will start getting ticketed, issued 72-hour notices, and possibly towed,” she said. “I’ll be removing my trailer Sunday night. I’m not sticking around to see what they’ll do.”
Danielle Danforth, the director of Housing & Homeless Services for West County
Community Services (WCCS), has seen this scenario play out too many times. She is currently overseeing two large homeless housing projects in West County—Elderberry Commons in Sebastopol and George’s Hideaway in Guerneville.
Danforth confirmed that WCCS moved one of the largest trailers from 116 to Park Village this week.
As for the other RV dwellers on 116, “We don’t have the money to move or house them,” Danforth said. “Nor do we have the money to fix their trailers or pay to register them. We can’t just write them a check or pull money out of thin air,” she said with an edge of frustration in her voice.
She noted that most of the grants and funding streams that support her organization do not include unrestricted funds for miscellaneous items like RV repair and registration.
Danforth said that finding alternative housing for homeless people living in RVs is particularly difficult—in part because they don’t want to lose their RVs.
“I get it,” she said. “An RV is their largest asset, and it’s security and safety.”
While living in an RV by the side of the road is no one’s idea of a perfect housing solution, the idea of living in a crowded shelter or the prospect of camping out in doorways or in a tent in the Laguna is far worse.
“We try to do our best,” Danforth said, “but the system doesn’t cover everyone—not by a longshot. We keep trying to fill the gap, but resources being what they are, that’s just not possible.”
1. Dwellers scramble? They have known this is coming for a very long time.
2. For us taxpayers, this small group of people are taking up 50% of our police officers time.
3. It was asked, "whatever help the city could offer to get them ready to move" The city and the taxpayers have given them an inordinate amount of help, especially during Horizon Shine. Many didn't take the help. The Sebastopol Police Department and the Sebastopol Fire Department have given tons of free help at the expense of taxpayers.
Are any churches offering RV parking for the homeless? Churches have a total income and property tax exemption, unlike all of us tax payers (how did 'separation of church and state' ever morph into special breaks for churches?). Churches should be expected to help more with the homeless problem... or pay taxes. Tax payers should not be expected to shoulder the homeless problem alone.