Snark Infested Waters: Civic anguish over homeless in cars
In biblical times, garment rending and breast-beating were the ways that high priests and lowly officials vented their anguish. Even before help desks and call centers, there were other scourges, plagues and frustrations that drove them to do that.
A while back, City Council did likewise when anguishing over the plight of the homeless in Sonoma. With pious verbal genuflection in the direction of the Sonoma Overnight Homeless Shelter a few yards outside council chamber doors, Council prayed over a request for five overnight parking spaces for homeless families forced to live in their cars.
Each lamented that while eager to do something someday, sometime, in a galaxy far, far away, they couldn’t move themselves to provide five parking spaces so the poor (mostly humans but occasionally a pet) could have a safe place to park and sleep at night, with access to a toilet. One expressed a sincere desire to meet a homeless person someday, to learn how to talk with them.
To be fair, some may have felt hamstrung by the City ordinance that bans poor people from Sonoma altogether. To wit:
9.44.020 Wandering with no means of support
It is unlawful for any person not having any visible means of support to wander about the streets, or loiter around the street corners, or to be in or about saloons, or on the Plaza or Mountain Cemetery.
Not only are the poor forbidden to offend the delicate sensibilities of wealthy tourists trying to navigate our many tasting rooms but, unless they can afford a hotel room, they better not stay overnight either:
9.44.010 Unlawful
It is unlawful to camp, lodge or tarry overnight in any vacant lot, or in any place where hay or straw is stored, or in any building, without the permission of the owner or occupant of the premises first being obtained.
Some cited the ‘no camping’ ordinance as a barrier to providing – even on a trial basis – five overnight parking spaces for the homeless.
Though City code doesn’t define ‘vacant lot,’ they apparently felt it includes a parking lot, which would hardly seem vacant if cars were parked there, as they are during daylight baseball games when the entire lot is decidedly not vacant.
Nor, apparently, did anyone notice that code section 9.44.010 allows anyone to camp, lodge and even tarry in any vacant lot if they have ‘the permission of the owner.’ Perhaps they forgot that the City owns the lot.
Flummoxed, Council tore its collective garments, beat their breasts and kicked the can further down the road, and the homeless along with it.
But on September 19, they caught up with the can again. This time, three compassionate councilwomen thankfully voted to allow the homeless to park overnight, concealed from public view in a City lot behind (where else?) the City’s stray-dog holding pen. For a trial period.
Two councilmen voted not to help at all until (wait for it) more could be done to help. A private citizen offered to foot the cost of the trial period.
But it’s still not a done deal. Some say Council may need a use permit from the Planning Commission. But if the Commission denies the permit, Council could presumably appeal to itself and overrule the Commission. Or not.
That loud bang we just heard was the can, getting another swift kick down the road to perdition.
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Are you kidding me? Learn how to talk to a homeless person? How do the people with the power and the money get away with such stupidity? Why do we trust these scumbags the dictate how we live our lives. This is probably one of the most disgusting things I have seen in a long time other than this election. I’d like to go talk to the individual who made that remark and afterwards ask if they felt that some sort of special training would have helped our conversation as I was homeless once. Good lord why do we elect people like this?