Roseland Review by Duane Dewitt - May 2018
“What a beautiful day for a walk in the Neighbor Wood” said a nice Roseland lady helping to do a Friends of Roseland Creek on Saturday, April 21st. The effort was organized by Friends of Roseland Creek in honor of Earth Day which was Sunday, April 22. She and over a dozen Roseland residents including Javier, and his teenage son Javier, were joined by students from Elsie Allen High School andPiner High School to pull out debris left by illegal campers in the area. The successful effort was done by noon in time for folks to go to the Santa Rosa City Earth Day event at Concrete Square in downtown Santa Rosa.
The day was a pleasant contrast to the events two days before on Thursday and Friday, April 19 and 20th when Santa Rosa Police Officers and California Highway Patrol Officers converged on the Roseland Village Shopping Center. They were there to make sure close to 80 campers who had been living behind the Dollar Tree Storemoved off the site. There were also numerous Sonoma County government employees there to oversee the removal of the campers. Advocates for the homeless campers had done effective publicizing of the eviction so 4 separate television stations were on site to listen to speeches.
But the talking did not stop the authorities for moving campers off-site, disposing of leftover belongings, and having a chain-link fence erected. Now the site where the old Rose Bowl bowling alley was, and all the way to where the old Albertsons store stood, has been fenced off from public access. This includes the small exercise park built on site a couple of years ago just before the homeless arrived in Nov. 2015. There were three large 20-yard dumpsters used to haul of materials left behind after folks were helped to leave with U-Haul moving vans. A guard on site said he believed the entire operation “was costing taxpayers over a hundred thousand dollars.”
Late Saturday night it was obvious there were various folks still going into the site because the fence was not securely locked. Also there was no night time security visible to this reporter. The dumpsters were still on site and now belongings and garbage were stacked against the fence where the people were going back into the site. As one Roseland local said, “Now the homeless are here they are never going away.”
Unfortunately, there is not enough housing to go around in Roseland even though new homes are in the process of being built. Down the street on Sebastopol Rd. and Boyd Street construction moves ahead on Village Station with 110 attached single-family units to be built. Crossroads affordable housing complex of 79 units is being built on Burbank Ave. to be opened this summer. Paseo Vista is also underway on Dutton Ave., but none of these homes are actually available to the most disadvantaged people in Santa Rosa. For those folks the offerings are the Sam Jones homeless shelter on Fresno Ave. to the west of Roseland. There is room for 138 folks there according to city staff.
A senior citizen living in Roseland contacted Roseland Review to say the city of Santa Rosa plans to evict them from their home of 6 years. When asked why, and how, the resident stated the city was buying the land on Burbank Ave. where she is a renter and the owners have said the city will not buy the land with a tenant living on site. Roseland Review will research this topic deeper because the city has bought land in the past and allowed people to live in the housing located on sites owned by the city. This has happened numerous times and the city now owns many houses. Some of the houses are in Roseland and perhaps there could be a way in which these houses can be used to lessen the effects of the housing crisis.
Veterans in need of housing have contacted Roseland Review and asked how to use their Section 8 Housing Vouchers issued by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. There are specific vouchers for homeless veterans known as HUD VASH which could be used to have rent-paying tenants in vacant taxpayer-owned housing units. Also possible is the use of the vouchers in shared housing. The city of Santa Rosa has recently approved an ordinance to allow previously illegal non-conforming housing in garages and outbuildings to be granted legal use. This is a type of amnesty for previously “unpermitted” uses to now be allowed as Accessory Dwelling Units anywhere in the city limits. This could be very helpful to many Roseland residents currently living in unpermitted living spaces. Ask the Planning and Economic Development Dept. at srcity.org.
