One of California’s famous wine regions has a government-sanctioned homeless encampment set up near the local courthouse, Fox News Digital has learned.
Photos taken on Sonoma County’s administrative campus in Santa Rosa show blue tents lining a parking lot where up to 100 homeless individuals can live. Leaders in Sonoma County, located in northern California’s famed wine region, approved the taxpayer-funded homeless camp this year after a “shelter crisis” declaration. The administrative complex is home to various offices such as Sonoma County Human Resources, the county registrar, Superior Court of California and district attorney’s office.
One photo shows a pile of trash on the parking lot next to a fence lined with bikes, while another photo shows a person picking through garbage dumpsters.
In March, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved “an emergency shelter site” on the government campus in response to growing homelessness concerns along Joe Rodota Trail. The trail is an old train rail line that was paved over and turned into a walking and bike path that has been the site of repeated homeless encampments in recent years, including this winter when the county worked to clear tents and remove people living there.
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“The appearance of homeless encampments around the county, particularly on Joe Rodota Trail, has underscored the urgent need for additional emergency shelter space,” the county said in a press release in March. “The current shortage of both interim and permanent supportive housing in Sonoma County has limited the county’s ability to clear the encampments along Joe Rodota Trail, which has repeatedly been closed over the last four years due to public safety concerns.”
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The county said the shelter site on the administrative campus is managed by a company called DEMA…
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