Page 10 - Sonoma County Gazette 3-19

VETERANS cont’d from page 1
innovative models from being carried out legally
in California. Sonoma County has the unique opportunity to lead in this area by providing a pilot demonstration project,” the report continues.
“I never lost faith that we could do this because my father, John Zane, a WWII Marine Veteran who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, taught me something about tenacity. Never, never forget the sacrifices military veterans have made to protect our freedoms,” Zane said in December.
Now that Veterans Village is complete, Zane says the county will use the project to inform its work on an ordinance legalizing tiny homes in the county, a model which Zane hopes will be copied throughout the state.
Cook also hopes the pilot program will prove effective in laying the groundwork for future tiny home projects on public land.
Tiny Homes
Each home at Veterans Village
cost $133,000. The project, which was initially budgeted for $1 million, cost $1.8 million primarily due to increased labor costs after the 2017 fires and unexpected difficulty lining up land for
“It would be nice to utilize what we’ve learned through this process [working on the pilot project] to help house homeless veterans here and around the country,” Cook said.
the project, CHSC Executive Director Paula Cook said at a May 8, 2018 Board of Supervisors meeting.
The completion of Veterans Village is the latest event in an on-going discussion about how the county should spend its limited resources on efforts to shelter the homeless.
The Wider Conversation
Despite the increased cost, the units still only cost a fraction the price of a conventional affordable housing unit, according to Cook.
Sonoma County has the third-largest homeless population of any mostly- suburban county in
One recent study from the Government Accountability Office estimated that the median cost of an affordable housing unit in California was $326,000 in 2015. Other studies put the figure higher.
the country last year, according to a federal housing report.
Veterans Village residents, who are picked from a wait list of veterans receiving federal housing vouchers, will have access to two Veterans Affairs case managers living on site, according to Zane.
In its response to the
crisis, the county has
adopted a Housing First
policy, a method that calls
for offering a package of
housing and social services
to people living on the
streets in the hopes of
stabilizing their lives and keeping them housed for a long time.
“It’s always cost-effective to house people,” given the cost of medical and emergency services accrued by people living on the streets, Zane said in an interview in February.
Veterans Village also features native plants, fruit trees and rain catchments designed to make the project sustainable. Once solar panels are installed, the homes will be zero net energy, according to Cook.
The model was proposed as an alternative to providing permanent housing only after certain prerequisites – such as completing a treatment program - are met by a person experiencing homelessness.
Pilot Program
The idea of Veterans’ Village was first approved in July 2015 as part of a county pilot program for tiny homes, called the Pilot Project to Use Non- Traditional Structures to Safely Shelter Homeless People.
While some activists support quick and inexpensive groupings of tiny homes, safe parking programs and the legalization of pre-existing homeless encampments, Zane favors permanent supportive housing projects, which are traditionally more expensive and more time-intensive to build.
The pilot project is meant to act as a “trial run” of the concept to allow County staff to determine “what changes to county or state codes will be necessary to allow duplication of the pilot on private sites countywide, potentially leading to statewide duplication,” according to a June 2016 staff report about Veterans Village.
“Nobody is going to be happy about an encampment in their neighborhood,” Zane told the North Bay Bohemian in 2015, “and I think we should put our funding into permanent solutions.”
“While there have been a number of ‘tiny home village’ in other states, California’s building and land use laws seemingly prevent some of the
With the completion of Veterans Village, Zane stands by her position, saying in a February interview that the encampments only help to perpetuate homelessness, while permanent supportive housing developments like Veterans Village are more likely to keep people off the streets in the long term.
10 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 3/19