Last year, Permit Sonoma issued 30-day orders forcing property owners to evict about 189 rent-paying tenants, many of them seniors, out of the only safe housing they could afford in the county, for lack of unobtainable or prohibitively expensive permits.
In the middle of the worst housing crisis in California history, this is twice the number of people that the County, after spending $20 million of taxpayer money, acquired housing for. Our government now spends $750,000 per unit to create affordable housing for a few dozen of the county’s more than 2,000 homeless people every few years. Hundreds more live in cars and trailers, many of them uprooted by our own government’s inhumane policies.
On April 6, four months ago, after receiving the largest affordable housing petition in county history (3,500 people have signed the Sonoma Independent’s “SAGE” petition to Stop All Government Evictions from Safe, Affordable Trailers and Tiny Homes Campaign), Supervisors Lynda Hopkins, Susan Gorin and David Rabbitt ordered Permit Sonoma and County Counsel to craft a solution that would create an emergency housing moratorium to curb the inhumane evictions that have removed thousands of residents from the most affordable housing in the region.
Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who has long championed the need to curb Permit Sonoma’s relentless campaign against low income residents of safe trailers and tiny homes, observed, “When we have so many unhoused people it seems crazy to evict people.”
Supervisor Susan Gorin concurred, stating, “I would like to consider a moratorium on evictions” until new policies could be developed.
Supervisor David Rabbitt, on April 6, summed up the supervisor's majority opinion when he concluded, “I did hear support for a moratorium to make sure no one gets kicked out of a structure that fails to meet a standard but is safe.”
Tennis Wick, the county’s powerful director of Permit Sonoma, has stated that it is up to Supervisors to determine policy. But in a staff recommendation report that took 20 weeks, his agency instead produced a series of recommendations that defied the Supervisor's instructions and, despite lip service to the need for emergency housing, enforces fine print regulations, such as the need to attach every modest dwelling unit to a water system, that would do almost nothing to slow the evictions.
Leo Chyi, the District Director to Supervisor Hopkins, noted that the staff advisory, “doesn’t appear to speak to curbing citations from Permit Sonoma that result in eviction. Following staff recommendations would be a small piece of progress but leave a long way to go still."
The Sonoma Independent urges citizens who care about affordable housing and our neighbors who live in trailers and tiny homes to let Supervisors know that we need real reform, not deference to legal policy oversight from Permit Sonoma’s obstinate director Tennis Wick.
The alternative housing item will be heard in the morning around 10:00 a.m. The meeting agenda item can be found here. Housing advocates are asking anyone who is able to, to join the zoom meeting (link Tuesday here) or attend in person, and urge supervisors to update local code to protect all people living in safe alternative housing.
Contact your Supervisor
The most important thing that each Sonoma County citizen can do is to directly contact those elected and paid to represent us. Ask that they place this issue on the agenda and vote for a moratorium or major policy change on Permit Sonoma’s vacate orders that result in evictions of low income renters from trailers, tiny homes and other safe affordable dwellings.
The Board of Supervisors office phone number for all districts is (707) 565-2241. Ask to speak with your supervisor and leave a message or speak to a staffer. Or you can send an email.
Listing of supervisors:
Susan Gorin, 1st District (East Santa Rosa, Kenwood, Sonoma)
Email: Susan.Gorin@sonoma-county.org
David Rabbitt, 2nd District (Cotati, Penngrove, Petaluma)
Email: David.Rabbitt@sonoma-county.org
Chris Coursey, 3rd District (Santa Rosa / Rohnert Park)
Email: district3@sonoma-county.org
James Gore, 4th District (Windsor to Cloverdale)
Email: district4@sonoma-county.org
Lynda Hopkins, 5th District (Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Annapolis)
Email: district5@sonoma-county.org