The lonely death of Shawn Voss
Familiar to many from his social media posts, Shawn Simeon Voss died alone in his van on Oct. 18, 2024
On October 13, Shawn Simeon Voss, a local homeless man in Sebastopol and a diabetic, wrote the following message on his Facebook page: “Just a simple fact...I am not going to make it through another winter living in my van.”
Less than a week later, he was found dead in that van by another homeless person, William, who came to check on him. The Sonoma County Coroner has not made an official determination of the cause of death. Voss was 57.
His longtime girlfriend, Brenda Reed, announced his death on Nextdoor on Nov. 10. Although the two had broken up, Reed remained friends with Voss—one of his only friends, she said, aside from a few fellow homeless people and his friends on Facebook and Nextdoor.
Though they were no longer a couple, for a long time Reed allowed Voss to shower and do his laundry at her Sebastopol home and kept his insulin in a special refrigerator. (Insulin must be refrigerated to remain effective.) At some point, she said that Voss, who also suffered from an unspecified mental illness, cleared out the refrigerator in a fit of anger, taking his insulin with him even though he had no way to refrigerate it in his van. More recently, Voss mentioned to Reed that he had lost his diabetic kit altogether.
“Living on the streets for over two years took an unthinkable toll,” Reed wrote of Voss. “In the end, he couldn’t manage his diabetes/insulin/mental health existing that way. Being a critically insulin-dependent diabetic Type 1, along with hyperthyroid, meant his medicine was essential. I saw him three times that week, delivering care packages with food and thyroid medicine. He couldn’t find his insulin and knew he was in bad shape, but wouldn’t agree to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.”
Reed believes Voss died after slipping into a diabetic coma.
Voss wasn’t always homeless. For several years, Reed said, he worked in sales and management. Until a year and a half ago, he had been working as a night-time site supervisor at a halfway house for people transitioning from jail. But Reed said Voss always had trouble with bosses, and eventually he was let go.
Reed also said Voss used methamphetamine. “This is what a lot of people on the street do,” she said. “This is a part of, like, how you deal with the fact that you’re out there, I guess. So you do meth. You make a little money, buy it, and feel good for a few days. He also collected cans for recycling, and he did enormous amounts of physical labor for somebody his age and health.”
Unlike many homeless people, Reed said Voss was organized and persistent when dealing with the bureaucracy of poverty. When he was injured on the job, he signed up for disability. He got insulin through Medicare. When he was fired, he instigated an OSHA investigation. Medically fragile, he argued that he should be listed higher on the list of people awaiting housing, but that never happened.
Voss was born in Alaska but moved with his mother to Sonoma County when he was a child. According to Reed, he had a difficult and traumatic childhood. He graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College in 1991 and went on to Sonoma State and UCSF, though it isn’t clear if he graduated from those institutions.
He also had an ex-wife and two adult children, from whom he was mostly estranged.
Voss’s ex-wife paid to have him cremated.
“The coroner told me that if somebody didn’t pay and he couldn’t get one of his kids to quote-unquote “claim him” that he would be cremated in a communal oven and sprinkled in a rose garden that was for ‘nameless indigents.’ That’s exactly what the coroner said to me. I just couldn’t bear that, so I got the money together to cremate him, and I just got the ashes back,” Reed said.
She is hoping to arrange some kind of service for him between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“I know he would be so touched that you actually want to write something about him,” Reed said, “because it really mattered to him to be remembered and to be important to his community. And it really matters to me too that he be remembered and have his death not be in vain. Maybe, you know, the community can hold him and also potentially shine a light on services that might need some help in our county.”
Shawn Voss on homelessness
From his Nextdoor post of July 9, 2024
Nearly every homeless person I have met [as a Site Supervisor for InterFaith Shelter Network] and since I became “homeless” a year ago has a psychiatric diagnosis or really ought to have one.
I have also worked with populations of dual and triple-diagnosed persons.
In my opinion, the homeless situation has a great deal to do with the lack of Human Services and is the result of defunding Mental Health and failure to deal with addiction in our Community.
I believe that the answer is to create a task force for bringing back these lost souls.
Incidentally, I want you to know that there is a shortage of people like Maria Rico, the Sebastopol Homeless Outreach Coordinator.
What if the homeless were empowered to help each other?
A coordinated effort to find rehabilitable, rehabilitated individuals from the homeless community itself.
To take persons from this population and teach, train them to help themselves and others.
There are organizations that work to help the homeless, like Saint Vincent de Paul.
It is always about the allocation of resources and civic-minded willingness to participate in Community.
Thank you. It’s important for us to humanize and tell the stories of our unsheltered. Well done and RIP to Mr Voss. We must do better.
Such fine journalism here! You’re showing why and how a reliable news source builds community and one willing to look at those among us who are struggling.