The City of Healdsburg is moving forward with the L&M Motel/Reach for Home interim housing project for the chronically homeless, a move which the city housing administrator and council members say is significant in terms of closing a gap in services and addressing the needs of the local homeless population.
On Jan. 18, the Healdsburg City Council unanimously approved the purchase/sale agreement for the 22-unit L&M Motel and accepted the $7 million-plus Project Homekey grant for the project.
The project, the first of its kind for the City of Healdsburg, is a collaboration between the city, Reach for Home and Burbank Housing.
“It’s not only significant in size and scope, but it’s also significant because it addresses a long standing need in our community, the ability to provide a safe and stable location for our most vulnerable residents,” Healdsburg Housing Administrator Stephen Sotomayor said during the council’s meeting. “I want to assure you, both the council and those that still have concerns about this project, that city staff and its project partners take this responsibility seriously. We believe we have a well-thought out plan that is data informed and tailored to the needs of our community and will make a significant difference in the state of homelessness in the city of Healdsburg.”
The purpose of the housing site, dubbed the L&M Village, will be to get people off of the streets and on a path toward permanent supportive housing.
The site will house individuals rather than families for up to 30 days with the opportunity for extending the stay for another 30 days. Drugs will not be allowed on the property, but people will not be turned away for having done drugs or for having substance abuse issues.
In order to get the project off the ground, the city and Reach for Home submitted a joint grant application for Project Homekey, a $750 million state program that was launched in 2020 with the goal of helping local communities rapidly acquire hotels, motels, commercial buildings and other housing types to rapidly house people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic.
The $7,048,800 grant request was approved by the state on Dec. 21 and city manager Jeff Kayannounced the grant award during the Jan. 3 Healdsburg City Council meeting.
While the city was awarded over $7 million in Homekey funds, funding gaps still remain. To fill in the gaps, the city has requested $1.1 million from the county for capital costs and $1.5 million to support three years of operating costs.
If the city receives county funding, the budget assumes that the city and its partners will have sufficient funds to be able to operate the site for five years. Sotomayor and Kay indicated that they’re hopeful the city will receive the requested county funds.
“We do hope to receive that funding and are continuing conversations. In the event we cannot access that entire $1.1 million in capital costs, we do have the ability to size the construction scope of work to accommodate any shortfalls and the ability to move money from operating into capital, so there is a lot of flexibility in how we approach this,” Sotomayor said.
Sotomayor said they have not put all their eggs in one basket when it comes to funding.
Sotomayor and Reach for Home CEO Maraget Sluyk said if for some reason they do not receive the county contribution, they will look for other funding opportunities and grant opportunities.
Regardless of receiving county funds, Sluyk noted that Reach for Home is hiring a program developer who will be in charge of looking for grants, funding and naming rights opportunities in order to ensure the project has funding even after the first five years.
“We have the ability to utilize unspent capital funds to operational subsidy. The homekey program is very flexible in the sense that it is designed to get projects up and running with an operational subsidy, so money can be moved back and forth as needed in order to put it where it best serves the project,” Sotomayor said.
Program details
The L&M Village program will offer case management seven days a week with a 3:1 resident to case manager ratio; daily therapeutic activities; an on-site mental health professional available once a week by appointment; community mobile health and wellness unit on site once a week; on and off-site drug and alcohol treatment as needed; employment services and job seeking assistance; a community garden program; and a facilities mentoring program.
For health care and mental health care, Reach for Home works with Alexander Valley Medical Center and Alliance Medical Center.
“We’ll get people to appointments and we go to people’s appointments with them and make sure that what they are being told is what we can help them manage, so we don’t just send them to a doctor and hope that they adhere to whatever the medical plan is. We actually advocate for them and we help them with that plan once they leave the doctor’s office,” Sluyk said.
The site would have an implemented curfew, 24-hour security and a full-time property manager on site who is trauma informed.
Sotomayor said project partners are committed to conducting ongoing community check-ins with nearby neighbors and businesses, and there will be an available hotline that people can call if there is a concern or issue regarding the site. Quarterly report meetings will also be held in order to inform the city on program progress.
Residents of the site will be allowed to bring pets, either a cat or a dog, but will have to sign a pet addendum and residents’ rooms will be inspected at least once a month.
The L&M Village will not be a drop-in site and those who get into the site will have to go through an intake process. Clients will mostly come through Reach for Home and their identified clientele pool.
Sluyk said with the program they hope to have an over 38% exit rate, meaning over 38% of the individuals who come to the site are successful in transitioning to permanent supportive housing.
Sotomayor said they hope to be operational by August 2022 and Sluyk said they’ll start out with around three residents on site.
Community concerns
Resident safety, location and the idea that the project was rushed through too quickly with little time for residents to review project details were the main concerns identified by public commenters and by a Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce survey that was answered by 195 community members.
The chamber also sent a letter to the city council regarding project concerns.
“Our members have asked, ‘Why was there no community process for identifying the location of the project?’ Location, near schools, and at the gateway to the city is often mentioned by our members as a concern,” the letter states.
Sotomayor and city manager Kay said the city did look at several other possible locations, including the old armory building on Powell Avenue, however, each location brought with it its own challenges.
“We did an extensive search across multiple different properties. As our city manager said, every single location will have its issues, but we do feel like we have a plan in place to keep the L&M with the facade that it currently has, to meld into the neighborhood well and to staff it correctly,” Sotomayor said.
And while some are concerned about the site’s close proximity to The Healdsburg School, a private K-8 school, it’s important to note that the school’s location is not permanent. In 2021, the school announced that it acquired a new school site off of Old Redwood Highway just outside Healdsburg.
In terms of community outreach, Sotomayor said the city noticed people near the site by U.S. Mail of upcoming meetings and held two community meetings and one-on-one meeting with stakeholders to be able to hear their concerns, but timing wise, this was a convergence of funding and location opportunities. Councilmember David Hagele said that sometimes you have to act fast when it comes to real estate.
During public comment, one resident who identified himself as William, begged the council to find a better location and to delay the vote. Another resident, who identified herself as a 49-year-old single woman, said she lives just 137 steps from the L&M Motel and is very concerned about her safety.
Another resident who was identified as Roxanne, expressed concerns about the L&M Village lowering the value of nearby homes and also expressed safety concerns.
Despite safety and location concerns from several neighboring residents, the project has garnered the support of several other individuals and city council members.
Paula, who lives near the motel, said she supports the project wholeheartedly.
“I am really happy about this project. My opinion is we can either choose to treat our homeless neighbors with kindness and offers of housing, or we kind of have to accept that shanty towns will become part of the landscape,” she said.
Laura O’Connor, a retired family physician and a Reach for Home board member, also voiced support for the project.
“I do hear the concerns of the people who live near the L&M site and are worried for their situation. I live near an area where people currently camp along a trail and in the brambles of the river near Badger Park. We have had no problems with safety ourselves, but I do see people sneak away in the mornings from their campsites and I don’t think a solution for our town is to be OK with fellow citizens randomly hunkering down in makeshift, unsanitary places,” O’Connor said. “I would rather see people treated with dignity, which means providing a warm, safe and supervised setting.”
A total of around 11 community members spoke in favor of the project, while around four spoke against it.
“I wanted to weigh in as well on this,” Mayor Ozzy Jimenez said following public comment. “This particular item really touches close to home for me. Growing up here in Sonoma County I’ve been able to see homelessness front and center my whole entire life. Over the past five years, it’s been great to see different cities, City of Sebastopol and City of Santa Rosa with Hotel Azura, do a heavy lift around a much-needed problem. We want to shelter our unsheltered population and so I am really excited to see where our city is going with this.”
Vice Mayor Ariel Kelley and Councilmember Skylaer Palacios both shared sentiments that they’re excited to see this opportunity but do hear and understand residents’ concerns regarding the project.
Councilmember Evelyn Mitchell said she is thrilled about the project moving forward.
“When we first started talking about the possibility of this hotel I was thrilled because it was like ‘oh my god, we’re actually going to do something,’ and it is a positive, tangible thing. We all need to do this, from a humanitarian perspective, if nothing else, it is the right thing to do,” Mitchell said.
