Sebastopol city council nixes homeless housing on former RV safe parking site

Fears that Sebastopol would be left holding bag if St. Vincent de Paul supportive housing plan falters leads council to pull plug.

photo credit: Marc Albert/KRCB
RV dwellers were kicked off site that may remain vacant lot.

A 22-unit apartment building meant to give shelter to those experiencing chronic homelessness was slated to go up in Sebastopol....on the former HorizonShine RV safe parking site.

But that new housing is now in serious doubt.

Acting on advice of city administrators, the Sebastopol city council chose to remove itself as a partner in the project by a 3-2 vote Tuesday.

That's after officials determined the struggling municipality might find itself on the hook for as much as five million dollars, should the project go south.

Sebastopol Mayor Diana Rich said the complexity of funding sources and stipulations within grant rules that the municipality bear ultimate responsibility should others fail to follow through forced a reassessment of support.

"To be perfectly honest," Rich said, "Our staff does not have the bandwidth to handle negotiating agreements, looking at the agreements that have to be signed with, in order to firm up these funds, and then the operations oversight."

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was to build and manage the planned building... slated for a largely undeveloped lot on the north edge of town.

The proposed Gravenstein Commons, is backed by millions of dollars in state Project Homekey funds. That's a program mostly funding the rehab and conversion of dilapidated motels into housing with wraparound services for the chronically homeless.

But the city's financial picture, along with doubts that the county or state would help out--owing to their own budget problems---weighed heavily Tuesday.

Council member Stephen Zollman succinctly summed up the general feeling on the dais.

"I'm in no mood to take any more risks on for this city, quite honestly. For a lot of reasons that councilmember Maurer just identified, I really, I just really am not," said Zollman.

Although Sebastopol itself applied for state grants a year ago, it was only recently, after funds were awarded, that officials learned the city would bear financial responsibility should the project go awry.

Mayor Rich, along with council member Neysa Hinton, ended up voting in favor of going forward with the project, if certain additional conditions could be met.

But those weren't enough to convince the council's other three members.