Thank you for joining 2,800 other caring people who signed our petition to stop Permit Sonoma’s evictions of people living safely in trailers, tiny homes, and other simple and affordable housing.

Thanks to you, this is now the largest, and most potentially impactful grassroots effort for affordable housing in Sonoma County history. 

Next Tuesday, January 25, the Board of Supervisors will be meeting to set their legislative agenda, in advance, for the entire year!  Last year, Supervisors did not have a single discussion about how they might ease Permit Sonoma’s draconian enforcement policies, which caused the eviction of about 200 low income residents (as detailed here), many of them senior citizens, from safe, affordable RV’s and tiny homes.

Next month, Copperwoman Saso, one of our campaign’s founders, whose video here has been seen by 40,000 people in Sonoma County, will be forced to move from the beautiful property where she was living. An attempt by her property owner friend to appeal the case resulted in escalated threats by Permit Sonoma of $13,000 in fines. They were forced into a settlement that allowed Saso the past few months to vacate and try to find a new location for her safe, affordable tiny home. 

Permit Sonoma’s relentless Eviction War on the Poor has continued. Since we first started this petition, another 76 violations have been issued that will likely result in evictions. This is a higher monthly rate than the previous year. 

Unless Sonoma County Supervisors vote for a moratorium on evictions soon, during the coming year, hundreds of more residents will be ordered to vacate their affordable homes, while an estimated 20,000 more of our neighbors currently living in unpermitted dwellings will continue to live with daily housing anxiety that a neighbor’s anonymous call to code enforcement will result in them being forced into homeless within 30 days. 

Just yesterday, Jayne, a 71 year old retiree who has been living safely on her own brother’s one acre property near Rohnert Park, was forced to vacate her newly built tiny home. Like with Saso, there was no way for Jayne to legalize her composting toilet and kitchen greywater, so she has joined the ranks of many couch-surfing Sonoma County seniors. If she becomes homeless, it will cost country taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire a place for her, along with subsidies that typically amount to $25,000 per year.

What We Are Asking For
Lynda Hopkins, the only Supervisor to champion the rights of thousands of people to live in the relative safety of affordable alternative housing, believes that the easiest way for the Board to address our government eviction crisis is to apply a short term solution that County government created a few years ago that allowed residents rebuilding their homes from fires to live in RV’s without permits. 

This post-fire disaster urgency ordinance could easily be used as a legally efficient model to protect unpermitted people living in equally safe RV’s, tiny homes and converted dwellings. The Sonoma Independent has presented a draft of such a housing emergency ordinance that can be read here. 

This would be a near term fix for antiquated housing code and septic issues that will likely take years to modernize. Legalizing composting toilets (which are permitted in eight other states) and kitchen greywater systems are ecologically beneficial and save tremendous amounts of water, as the Sonoma Independent reported here.

But doing so will require the coordination of multiple county agencies. During this time, unless our county supervisors choose to place an urgency protection ordinance on the agenda and vote for it, hundreds more people will lose their homes.

How You Can Help

We are asking all Sonoma County residents willing to help to please call your county supervisor at (707) 565-2241 and urge them to vote on January 25 to place an urgency ordinance protecting unpermitted people from eviction on the agenda for early February.

Or email all the County Supervisors and tell them where you live and a few sentences on how you feel about this and why. 

You can email them all at once and let us know you have done so by pasting these addresses into an email:

Susan.Gorin@sonoma-county.org, David.Rabbitt@sonoma-county.org, district3@sonoma-county.org, district4@sonoma-county.org, district5@sonoma-county.org, campaigns@progressivesource.com   

Here are a few suggested email subject lines but creating your own would be even better: 

Protect the right of unpermitted people to live safely in RV’s & tiny homes 

Put Permit Sonoma’s eviction war on the poor on agenda next month

Do you live in Supervisor James Gore or Chis Coursey's District?

We are looking for volunteers who live in the 3rd and 4th districts (Healdsburg/Windsor/Santa Rosa) to join in a zoom call to discuss their positions with Supervisors Gore and Coursey. You can find out which district you live in here. Please email us at campaigns@progressivesource.com if you are interested and we can help walk you through this..

Write a Letter to the Press Democrat
Another way you can help is to submit a 200 word letter to the editor to the Press Democrat at letters@pressdemocrat.com. Many people read the PD, including the supervisors, and regular letters to the editor help to keep this issue in the news. 

Testimonials
We are also collecting testimonials from people who have been impacted by Permit Sonoma’s evictions of tiny homes, trailers, and other alternative living spaces. Testimonials can be anonymous, if desired, and sent to campaigns@progressivesource.com. If you would rather speak to someone, leave your name and phone number and we will call you back. 

Please Donate
We could use your direct financial support to advertise this effort on geo-targeted social media. We have received and spent all the $1,600 we received to date for advertising (this does not include the $2,500 that Change.org collected to promote the petition on its platform from nearly 100 helpful supporters!).

All contributions will go directly to such costs, and could be made by donating to campaigns@progressivesource.com through Paypal here or through Venmo here.

Thank you for caring and sharing,

Jonathan Greenberg and Tim Ryan
The Sonoma Independent