STOP THE SWEEPS IN SANTA ROSA AND HOUSE THE HOUSELESS
We demand that the Santa Rosa city and Sonoma County STOP THE SWEEPS and provide adequate shelter, safe parking, sanctioned secure encampments, and basic sanitation and hygiene stations. Resources used for "sweeps" and displacement of vulnerable, exposed human beings must be redirected to housing solutions, safe living spaces while sufficient housing is constructed, trauma, psychiatric and disability resources, drug and alcohol addiction recovery support, and HOUSING.In Sonoma County, we are experiencing a crisis of homelessness. According to the County's 2020 Homeless Count Summary, there are nearly 3,000 people living without shelter. Concurrently, there is an affordable housing crisis in California. The right to housing is one all humans deserve to have. Historically and currently, the number of shelter beds and adequate housing are vastly insufficient to provide shelter for these residents.
The city of Santa Rosa relies heavily on the use of displacement tactics called "sweeps" which use valuable resources and local government dollars to routinely and arbitrarily dismantle areas where people living outside are living. In the process of these "sweeps," legally required adequate housing is often neither offered nor available, personal items required to be returned to folks are bulldozed and destroyed, and the people living in these public spaces are forced to move to another city location. These practices are unjust, unsustainable, and a waste of government resources.
