The sun is going down on Horizon Shine
The sun is going down on Horizon Shine
Staff and residents scramble to find tenants new housing before the March 3 move-out date
It’s crunch time at Horizon Shine RV Village.
In February 2022 the temporary housing community known as Horizon Shine was set up just off Gravenstein Highway North, and 25 unhoused residents from the Morris Street RV encampment moved in. Built by Sonoma Applied Village Services (SAVS), Horizon Shine began as a one-year pilot program but was extended to two.
Site owner St. Vincent de Paul gave SAVS verbal notice of its decision to build low-income housing on the Horizon Shine site, and SAVS issued a March 3, 2024 hard move-out deadline to all tenants—or clients, as SAVS calls them—in response.
“We gave the clients a 90-day notice back in late November,” said SAVS Executive Director Adrian Brumley. “That will give [St. Vincent de Paul] a month to clean up the site before they hand it over [to the contractor].”
The move-out date created some degree of consternation among the 21 current Village clients, who now find themselves in a race against time to find replacement housing. Adding to the complexity of the situation is the fact that most of the clients are attached to their RVs and trailers and refuse to give them up.
“That is a huge barrier for us to get them housed,” Brumley said. “That’s their home. Nobody can take that from them. And they’re worried about failing once they do get put into permanent housing. ‘What if I get an apartment and I mess up and I have nothing to go back to?’ So they don’t want to give up their trailer because they have something.”
Brumley added, “A lot of them have ideas but are struggling to get there, so we’re helping them with that, of course. A lot of them really didn’t think we were going to close, so they waited till the last minute and now they are kind of panicking. We’re setting fast-track goals for them.”
John Henry Hull is one of the clients with plans in the works that have yet to be confirmed. He lived in a van on Morris Street before moving to Horizon Shine, where he now lives in a school bus. A commercial fisherman by trade, he broke his shin bone while fishing last season and spent the last year recovering.
Regarding his housing situation, Hull said, “It’s stressful, because I procrastinated.” He is, however, grateful to have a roof over his head and grateful for his future housing options.
SAVS has offered him a trailer to live in and a future spot to park it if he can, in turn, find a place to park his school bus. He also received a tentative invite to live with family in Sacramento, and has friends—and a possible bus parking spot—locally.
Meanwhile, Hull’s also on a list to get a housing referral, his leg is almost completely healed, he’s hooked up with Sonoma County Job Link and starting to look for work, and he finally has all his legal documents—Social Security card, California ID, etc.—in order as of Thursday, Dec. 28.
With continued collaboration, patience and perseverance he and a few other clients are on target to find housing well before the March deadline.
“We do have a couple of clients who are moving out of state,” Brumley said. “We are paying for their vehicles to get fixed, we’re paying for their registrations so that they’re legal when they’re hauling their trailers. We’re paying for their insurance, registration, any repairs to the vehicle that they need done before the closure, and we’re even willing to pay for gas to get them to their destination.”
Those clients, in turn, need to provide SAVS proof they have a place to live in order to cement the agreement.
Each client case is unique; each client has different needs and a different circumstance. But SAVS exists solely to help them find the housing they need.
Some of the Horizon Shine clients live in trailers that are owned by SAVS. Brumley says that if those clients meet their goals moving forward and are able to locate a piece of land where they can safely and legally park their trailers, SAVS is willing to sign the trailers over to them.
“We’ve made offers to several clients: If you can do this, we’ll sign it over to you,” he said.
Brumley is also in talks with several organizations about possible client placement. St. Vincent de Paul has tentatively offered temporary transitional housing, similar to Horizon, for some clients until a permanent fix is found. And SAVS has begun preliminary talks with Homes 4 the Homeless, another local nonprofit advocacy group for the unhoused, regarding a possible transitional housing site for RVs and trailers in Guerneville.
There is still much work to be done, however, and time is of the essence. With the March 3 deadline fast approaching, SAVS staff are working hard to find each of the Horizon Shine clients new housing.
Mistry Lujan, the case manager at Horizon Shine, said, “I’ve been where they [the clients] are at currently; I’ve been there and I got through it. And I didn’t get through it with services of any kind, but I had the chance to actually navigate myself through it. And so I love the chance to empower anybody to move forward with their life.”
While John Henry Hull’s housing future remains uncertain, he expressed thanks for the support he’s received from Horizon Shine and SAVS for the past 22 months.
“I feel fortunate,” he said. “I haven’t had to pay for electricity or rent for the time I’ve been here. And that alone has been a huge, huge blessing, you know?”
Sonoma Applied Villages Services (SAVS), 1275 4th St Suite #101, Box 196, Santa Rosa, CA 95404. (707) 861-0646. tinyvillages@sonomavillages.org. sonomavillages.org
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