County Fairgrounds Provide Overnight Parking for Homeless

Lee Romney reports on Santa Rosa’s safe parking program, which allows homeless individuals with cars—which amounts to an estimated 20 percent of the 3,300 homeless residents of Sonoma County, where Santa Rosa is located.

“The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors created the safe parking program in late January as an emergency response to freezing weather, making it one of just a handful on the West Coast. (Similar programs operate in Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo and San Diego County.)”

“But lawmakers here went one step further. In what Sonoma County advocates for the homeless called a "pinch me" moment and a "watershed," supervisors removed a ban on the "use of vehicles for human habitation" from the county's anti-camping ordinance.”