Proposed Urgency Ordinance to Protect People Living in Unpermitted Safe Alternative Housing from Government Eviction Grassroots affordable housing rights campaign pressures supervisors to take responsibility for shameful eviction of hundreds of low income renters

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Next Tuesday, January 25, the Board of Supervisors will be meeting to set their legislative agenda, in advance, for the entire year!  Last year, Supervisors did not have a single discussion about how they might ease Permit Sonoma’s draconian enforcement policies, which caused the eviction of about 200 low income residents (as detailed here), many of them senior citizens, from safe, affordable RV’s and tiny homes.

The coalition of activists making up SAGE (Stop All Government Evictions) and The Sonoma Independent are calling on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to place on the agenda for early February, 2022, an emergency ordinance to prevent Permit Sonoma from ordering the eviction of people living in safe, but unpermitted, alternative housing.

Lynda Hopkins, who has been a champion of the rights of thousands of people to live in the relative safety of affordable alternative housing, believes that the easiest way for the Board to address our government eviction crisis is to apply a short term solution that County government created a few years ago that allowed residents rebuilding their homes from fires to live in RV’s without permits. 

This post-fire disaster urgency ordinance could easily be used as a legally efficient model to protect unpermitted people living in equally safe RV’s, tiny homes and converted dwellings. This would be a near term fix for antiquated housing code and septic issues that will likely take years to modernize. Legalizing composting toilets (which are permitted in eight other states) and kitchen greywater systems would be ecologically beneficial and save tremendous amounts of water, as the Sonoma Independent reported here. But doing so will require the coordination of multiple county agencies. During this time, unless our county supervisors choose to place an urgency protection ordinance on the agenda and vote for it, hundreds more people will lose their homes. 

Because of the complexities involved with finding a permanent solution to this problem we are advocating for the moratorium to be passed first, preventing additional evictions while giving the Board more time to find a long term solution. Specifically, we will be calling on our Board of Supervisors to amend Sonoma County Code section 26-92-200 with a moratorium on enforcement of violations of the code that lead to evictions of tenants from alternative affordable housing, including tiny homes, yurts and mobile trailers, until such time as Permit Sonoma and the County Supervisors are able to amend the code to reflect the emergency need for lower cost housing and the environmental sustainability and advantages of composting toilets. (Eight states, including Colorado and Washington, allow composting toilets, which save water and have, as of yet, NEVER been proven to adversely impact public health).  

 

Draft of a New Urgency Ordinance to Protect People Living in Unpermitted Safe Alternative Housing from County Government Eviction

While the urgency ordinance is in effect, Permit Sonoma shall cease code enforcement activity that results in orders of Unlawful Use/Zoning Violations issued against property owners hosting unpermitted safe affordable alternative housing, including trailer/RV’s, tiny homes, converted barns and garages, and yurts.

Exceptions to this moratorium on enforcement shall include:

1) When the property owner is not a full time resident

2) When there is more than one unpermitted safe affordable alternative dwelling per acre, for a maximum of three units for three or more acres.

3) When there is an immediate and clear threat to public health (such as blocking egress) or evidence of  significant safety violations.  The absence of a permit, composting or trailer toilets, or alternative dwelling structures shall not constitute such evidence.  

4) If there has been a criminal arrest by the sheriff’s department on the premises or repeated calls for law enforcement by neighbors

To protect the County from the potential of lawsuits relating to this ordinance, we are proposing that if Permit Sonoma is called to inspect an unpermitted dwelling, property owners who rent safe affordable alternative housing can be required to sign an agreement indemnifying the county agains lawsuits by neighbors. This is similar language to what was recently included in the emergency fire ordinance that expands the use of travel trailers and RVs for fire victims.

Proposed language:
“The Property Owners shall indemnify, hold harmless and defend the County, its agents and employees, from and against any and all claims, demands, liabilities, costs, expenses, actions, and causes of action that may be asserted by any person or entity, including the Property Owner, arising out of or in connection with the performance of the terms of this Order.”

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Jonathan Greenberg

Jonathan Greenberg is the editor and publisher of the award winning Sonoma Independent, which he founded to serve the public interest with insight, solutions and advocacy. He is also founder and CEO of ProgressiveSource.com, a 17 year old public interest digital advocacy company that builds public awareness of solutions that serve the common good. Progressive Source owns the Sonoma Independent and the Maui Independent. Jonathan is the also the founder of the Climate Solutions Advocacy Institute (CSAI) and its parent educational nonprofit, Informing to Empower. He created the non-profit democratizing media Candidates Video Debate platform, as well as the InformYourVote.org system. Through CSAI, he co-authored and directed the creation of California's Renewable Energy Acceleration Law ballot initiative. Jonathan was a Web 1.0 pioneer. In 1996 he started Gist Communications, a disruptive new media company that competed successfully with News Corp’s TV Guide Online. In 1997, Gist was one of just 14 websites in the world to be named a winner of the First Annual Webby Awards in San Francisco. Following Gist and the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Jonathan served, in 2002 and 2003, as Policy Director for the New York City Council’s Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment, where he directed media and public policy campaigns and was the city council’s lead analyst for federal relief programs. Simultaneous with his public interest work, Jonathan has been an investigative financial journalist with 40 years of experience with national publications, including Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York, Town & Country. Mother Jones and The New Republic. During the past five years, Jonathan wrote four of the most widely-read exposes in the Washington Post about Donald Trump. Jonathan has known Trump longer than any journalist writing today. He was head of research for the first Forbes 400 when Trump conned him into putting him on the list. The notorious phone calls Trump taped pretending to be John Barron was the subject of monologues on Colbert, the Daily Show and Seth Meyers. Jonathan has appeared live on a dozen major news shows, including on CNN with Chris Cuomo, Erin Burnett and Don Lemon, on MSNBC with Ari Berber and Ali Velshi, and NPR's On the Media. He is a graduate of Yale Law School's Masters Degree in Law fellowship program. A fuller bio and links to Jonathan's work can be found at JonathanGreenberg.com.

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