Some good news for a change! Thanks in part to the support of 3,700 of you who signed the Sonoma Independent's petition, and the 135 people who made small donations to change to market it, thousands of county residents living in trailers and tiny homes will feel safer in the new year!
On December 6, 2022, Sonoma County Supervisors voted to end a code enforcement process that has caused the eviction of 200 residents per year from alternative affordable safe housing.
Supervisors voted 5-to-0 to approve two major revisions to county zoning code.
For the first time, the ecologically low-impact tiny homes and trailers that today house thousands of low income renters will be legally permitted.
As of April 1, 2023, more than 60,000 property owners living in Sonoma County’s unincorporated area will have the legal right to to rent out one trailer, RV, or tiny home. The zoning code revision is technically an expansion of the county’s emergency Temporary Housing Program. No vacation rentals will be allowed.
A second revision will make Sonoma County the first county in California State history to legalize composting toilets, which use little or no water.
Trailers and tiny homes will be required to have a “haul and carry” plan for gray water. But for the first time, they will no longer need to be required by law to be connected to septic systems, a very expensive and often unattainable obstacle to many property owners.
The vote, which was championed by County Supervisor and organic farmer Lynda Hopkins, came as the result of this grassroots SAGE campaign (“Stop All Government Evictions”) that was launched on this website on November 4, 2022.
An eight part investigative series in the Sonoma Independent exposed the shameful fact that our seemingly progressive county government had become one of the largest evictors of low income tenants in the entire state of California.
A month long review of thousands of citations by Permit Sonoma showed that in the midst of the largest housing crisis in history, the county’s code enforcement agency was evicting nearly 200 tenants, many of them seniors, from safe, affordable tiny homes and trailers. This was double the number of unhoused people that Sonoma County acquires emergency housing for; at a cost, to taxpayers, of $20 million each year.
To build widespread local public awareness of this inhumane system, the Sonoma Independent launched this Change.org petition. Signed by more than 3,700 people, it quickly became the largest housing rights petition in Sonoma County history.
More than 135 petition signers also made micro donations to Change.org to promote the petition, which called for a new ordinance that would align county policy with our government’s frequently proclaimed commitment to retaining and expanding affordable housing.
In a nutshell, our petition urged county supervisors to revise zoning codes to permit thousands of people to live simply so that they can simply afford to live in California.
Read more about this extraordinary grassroots victory for affordable housing in the Sonoma Independent's coverage here.
Here is a video of Supervisor Lynda Hopkins announcing this historic vote.
And here is the great democracy-enhancing protest song video by "Tiny Home Grandma" Copperwoman Saso, seen by 50,000 Sonoma County residents, that kicked off the evolutionary media campaign to align our county policy with our elected officials' intention to support, instead of criminalize, the most affordable housing in California.