Page 14 - Sonoma County Gazette 12-2019

COAST cont’d from page 1
Sally...Homeless near the Home in Which She Grew to Maturity
By Bob John
“Get a job!’ roared out as the east-bound driver whizzes by, is the hardest
part of begging.
She lives in the corner of a 2-sided cement-block dumpster-bunker in
back of the Shell station at Farmer’s and 4th, surrounded on the two open sides by 3 ranks of 5 or 6 dozen paper grocery bags with a little recycling in each, an outer ring of bike, chair, rusty shopping carts to deflect attention, sleeping on two worn bath-towels, covered by thin blankets and a large garbage bag in rain.
For weeks, Sally-Anne had been standing on the Hwy 12 median just east of the Farmer’s/4th junction, soliciting money from cars stopped at the light.
Hoping to raise enough to buy a camper-van before the rains set in, she seems to have no practical idea of what can be gotten for $2000 or how to know if she’s getting something that will hold up.
She saves enough from begging to rent a motel room about once a month so she can shower and sleep warm in a bed.
Sally-Anne is about 40, trim, initially articulate, pretty, moved to SR with her family after HS in San Jose, where she was voted “Most Artistic” in her senior class and seems to have had many friends and a reasonably good childhood. She has an AA from SRJC.
Her mother earned in real estate double Dad’s wage at a grocery store, was the nurturer, daily decision-maker. Sally-Anne took care of Mom as she died of cancer at home near the Flamingo. Her father is remarried and his new wife didn’t want Sally around.
Sally-Anne says she has had depression for many years and at about 20 was deemed eligible for SSI, but dropped that support and made a living as a therapeutic masseuse who worked in client’s homes. She now gets $118 a month in food stamps and says she intends to reapply for SSI. She also says she has PTSD, though not from any specific source.
When I visited, she repeatedly apologized for “the messiness” of her space (though it looked orderly to me), spent time seeming to tidy, arrange, picking up little pieces of detritus and brushing non-evident dirt into a pile. We stood and talked for some time while she ruefully cleaned hands and arm-pits with paper towels dampened at a spigot in back of the station.
Sally-Anne worried that when water splashed on the concrete, it created problems for insects that lived there. She is deeply despondent over the death of a favorite cat she was nursing.
She allows no touching and is apologetic about that. “I never know when someone might be sticky.”
My legs were giving out. I said I needed to move to lean agains a wall about 10 feet away. She suggested we sit in my car and talk. We did for a couple of hours. Sally-Anne brought along a very large piece of heavy paper and a paper towel. She carefully covered the seat, saying she could never be sure if there would be something sticky where she was going to sit, and laid the paper towel on the arm-rest.
She knows my car well. It’s new and clean.
Sally-Anne answers questions by telling convoluted stories that have no apparent connection to the questions, stories filled with irrelevant details internally debated as she goes along.
When I began to leave at about 10:00, she said she needed to go to Ross, that they are open until midnight and asked me to take her. I said I would be glad to. She needed to get something from her camp spot. She rummaged and bobbed up and down, turned around many times over about ten minutes.
A disabled friend came along on an electric scooter, could see Sally-Anne was searching, and shined a light on the refuge. Sally-Anne continued. I was weary, got out, greeted the friend who lives nearby, and said I needed to go. There was a great rush of apologizing, explaining, wondering if I might still be game for a Ross trip. Sally-Anne continued cleaning, looking, but there were only the recycle sacks, towels and blankets. I said I had to go.
I called tonight, didn’t get an answer, left a message that, if she wished, we’d meet again and I’d take her to Taco Bell, her daily meal. “They can’t beat.” she assures me.
And beyond the infrastructure required for those who live on the coast it is critically important to understand the infrastructure demands and impacts of those who visit the coast. The interests of these two groups can and do conflict from time to time.
Carrying capacity is all about understanding limits. The limits of man-made infrastructure and the limits of the natural environment. Good planning
is all about staying within those limits. In the Coastal Zone good planning also means balancing statewide policy interests with the quality-of-life and community character interests of those who live on our coast.
For example, an infrastructure limitation we have all experienced is worsening traffic throughout our county and region. Thinking of the coast, how many cars can Hwy One handle at peak season? And how about the roads which lead to the coast through Petaluma, Sebastopol and Guerneville? It doesn’t matter from which direction you come; you will be travelling on a two lane most often narrow rural road.
In the case of all man-made infrastructure the most important point is that it is limited. Exceeding the limits is sure to degrade the natural environment or quality of life or, most likely, both.
The Draft LCP talks a lot about the number of people who live in the Coastal Zone. There is also reference to the number of visitors.
Both groups impact infrastructure and the natural environment. However,
it is the visitor category which grows and results in the greatest strain on infrastructure. There are millions more visitors to the coast than there are residents...we all know this. While it is recognized that tourism is a central part of the coastal economy there is little consideration of the issue of tourism carrying capacity in the long term. This basic issue underlies most if not all the policy discussion found within the Draft LCP.
Getting a handle on the issues surrounding growth in tourism must be a key aspect of the update process. It is easy for folks to understand highly visible growth such as a new subdivision or a major hotel but it is not so clear when growth comes in the form of increased day visitors coming out to enjoy expanded recreational facilities such as trails, regional parks and major events. No judgment intended as to the value of such activities, but impacts are impacts and planning must treat increased impacts with care.
The fiction of sustainability: It is popular today to frame all manner of human activities as being sustainable. Webster’s dictionary tells us sustainable means “Of, or relating to, or being a method of using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.”
As we ponder the future of the coast in this LCP update it will be important to take a hard look at the cumulative impacts resulting from increased use
of the coast, including those developments we take for granted as being desirable. For more than a century the Sonoma Coast has been a refuge for people living in the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. This is certainly still the case. Growth in the Bay Area and especially the Highway 80 corridor to Sacramento generates large increases in visitor days to the Sonoma Coast. In addition to this natural “local” growth in visitors there is a constant, ambitious government funded push to generate more visitors from afar.
The LCP needs also to address coordination between those agencies promoting more tourism and those agencies looking out for the well being of the communities most heavily impacted.
I hope to explore this question in greater depth in a future issue.
14 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 12/19