Page 44 - Sonoma County Gazette February 2017

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Santa Rosa 167,815 Healdsburg 11,254 Cloverdale 8,618 Sebastopol 7,379 Petaluma 57,941 Rohnert Park 40,971 Sonoma 10,648 Windsor 26,801 Cotati 7,265
and of course the foliage still covers a good portion of the front porch. Who
is responsible for that? I guess no one is. A tree fell on Redwood a few years back, cutting neatly in half an (abandoned and condemned) house, cracked the foundation of the house on whose property it was rooted on. The family who owned the house had been complaining the water coming out of the culvert was eroding the soil holding the tree’s roots – were on the phone with the county 30 minutes before it fell, in fact – but the county said “your land, your problem.” Five years later, still the tree sits where it fell.
Just the Numbers
higher.” Per Sgt. Salas, who has been assigned to the Guerneville Sub-Station for many years, the sheri ’s deputies spend a considerable amount of time and resources driving homeless folks to Santa Rosa for the services their particular situation may require.
If you would like to learn more about the Lower River Area Community Alliances, become involved as a volunteer, or if you have some community concerns or solutions you would like to share, you can “like” our Guerneville Community Alliance and/or Russian River Alliance (Monte Rio) FB pages. You can also contact Mark Emmett at 707-529-0534 (Guerneville) or Chuck Ramsey at 707-239-1639 (Monte Rio).
Homelessness is a very complex and di cult problem that we would all like to be able to x, though we can seldom agree on the solution(s). Some people believe the solution lies in helping more, while others think we need to get tougher and help less. I think in order for us to solve a problem, it’s important for us to know what the actual facts are rst. I thought a good way to start our learning process is to try and take the emotion out of the discussion, and just start with some veri able factual statistical information.
A
I’ve heard people say a number of times that homelessness is a “problem everywhere”. While that is obviously true, it’s a vague statement which tends to leave the impression that our problem in the Lower River Area is not any more signi cant than anywhere else. I’ve also heard people say that we have four times per capita the homeless population of San Francisco, while others say that number is speci c to the entire county of Sonoma. So, what is true and what isn’t?
h, winter. I sat most of the day huddling by my space heater, waiting for Godot. Ooops, I mean waiting for the furnace repairman. That, or shoveling the mud from my parking space. That’s okay, I have plenty
The data sources I have used are primarily the 2015-2016 US Census population statistics, suburbanstats.org, and the HUD Point-In-Time Homeless Counts for
winter so far: it’s a warm day when the mercury tops 45 degrees, morning frost is a common occurrence, and the Russian River is our local version of the Big Muddy. Meanwhile a deep and luxurious snowpack in the Sierras promises that, for this year at least, our water worries have eased. There are some
2015-2016.
City/County Population
San Francisco 864,816 Sonoma County 502,146
1. * Lower River Area 6,200+/-
City/Cty Homeless Pop
6,775
2,906 *206+/- 1,640 90 64 44 298 126 21 7 3
% Homeless
0.8% 0.6%
*3.3%+/- 1.0% 0.8% 0.7% 0.6% 0.5% 0.3% 0.2% 0.03% 0.04%
other worries – nothing major, but still. That big tree fell in what I call Camp Meeker’s “front porch”: the wide area over the culvert that is both Tower and Market Streets. The part of the tree blocking tra c to Market Street was quickly sectioned o and carted away, but the rest of the tree remains where it fell,
A couple of important things to note are that the 2016 Sonoma County Point-In- Time Homeless Count report (see link below for the downloadable report, then page 17 for statistics cited) does not break down the “West County” area beyond Sebastopol and all areas that are not Sebastopol. I did inquire as to whether there were any more speci c statistics for the “West County” The best breakdown the Sonoma County CDC could provide was 78 homeless counted in Monte Rio, 68 in Guerneville, Pocket Canyon 7, Forestville 1, and Occidental/Bodega Bay 2. The total population of 6,200+/- for the Lower River Area used above includes Guerneville, Monte Rio, and Rio Nido, and is rounded. Regardless, if a conservative number of 150 homeless people were used to calculate the percentage above for the Lower River Area as I have de ned it, the result would be 2.5%. That is still two and a half times more than the next most a ected area of Santa Rosa, and slightly more than three times the population of homeless per capita for San Francisco. The national per capita homelessness rate is 0.16%, making Sonoma County about three times the national rate, and the Lower River Area about 15-20 times the national rate.
Yeah, the oods. I bet that, like me, you get calls and emails from relatives around the country who just watched the news and want to know if you got washed out to sea. The funny thing is, Camp Meeker doesn’t really need to worry about oods. I live on the front row, so to speak, on Redwood Avenue, and at its highest Dutch Bill Creek was still thirty feet below my property. Even downstream toward Tyrone, those houses right on the creek stayed dry. Yes,
sonoma-county-continuum-of-care.wikispaces.com/Sonoma+Co
That isn’t to say there’s nothing to worry about when it gets wet. Mud can slide, and trees can fall. In the meantime, enjoy winter in Damp Sneaker! My very rst year, I found a paci c giant salamander in my back yard. You think of salamanders as little things smaller than your hand. Not this one! Easily over a foot long. What else might you nd wandering in the woods? All
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the squishy things come out when it’s wet. The humble banana slug. The feisty rough-skinned newt. The surprisingly compact rubber boa. The elegant black salamander. The startling ring-necked snake. Or look up into the trees: Sonoma County is the wintering ground of choice for most of the large raptors – hawks, red-tailed, red-shouldered, sharp-shinned, and Cooper’s. Kestrels and Ospreys. The Northern Harrier. The majestic Golden Eagle. It’s true that these birds tend to like the open dairy country better than the forest – but you needed an excuse to get out anyway. The sun sets early in Camp Meeker, so do your creek clambering in the morning, then pick up a picnic lunch for some bird watching. I particularly recommend the environs of the estero, the green swath between Valley Ford and Tomales. One day we saw a whole family unit of Golden Eagles. Five of them at once! That’s nothing compared to what was clearly the Red-Tailed Hawk National Convention on a hill just o of Middle Road. There must have been two hundred of them, schmoozing with each other over where to nd the most scrumptious eld mice voluptuous voles.
It’s all there for the seeing. You just got to slow down, look up, look down, sit down, wait. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
Both Santa Rosa and San Francisco are large city centers that have 24 hour emergency medical services and eets of ambulances available. They have detox and detention facilities, large police and re departments, and adequate buildings/locations available for emergency shelters and homeless housing projects. The Lower River Area is the smallest and most remote population within the 10 areas of Sonoma County considered above. 25% of our re department calls are homeless related calls. We have one ambulance to serve our community, and a round-trip to the nearest emergency room takes our only ambulance out of service for at least two hours. Lt. Molinari, who oversees the Sheri ’s Guerneville Sub-Station, stated “From approximately 07/29/16 to 12/15/16 the River Sub Station deputies responded to 265* calls for service that ended up being homeless related. *This doesn’t include every contact we have that could be categorized as a homeless related incident. So the stats are probably
44 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 2/17
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of hot water and an electric blanket. I’ll get by. It has been quite a
The moral, I guess, is that we’re on our own.
Speaking of sticking together (NOT), some bozo left a big pile of rusty equipment trash on the basketball court outside the re station. There, too, it sits to this day. Chances are it was not a Camp Meeker resident who did that – just some cheapskate who didn’t want to pay a dumping fee.
That’s why we need to stick together.
I know this wasn’t a historic ood by any stretch – but Dutch Bill’s Creek bed is wide enough, and the sides of the canyon generally steep enough, that the water doesn’t rise very high. It just gets FAST.