Sutter Health has donated the empty Warrack Hospital to Social Advocates for Youth, and plans are underway to convert the facility to new use.
Like the setting for a mystery novel, an eerily quiet hospital with no patients and no staff sits in limbo, slowly deteriorating. Abandoned medical devices cast long shadows in the dimly lit corridors. Worn and musty carpets lay underfoot and leak-stained ceilings loom overhead. A courtyard area is littered with fallen leaves.
It might be fodder for fiction, but in Santa Rosa’s Bennett Valley, it really exists. The former Sutter Warrack Hospital, at the corner of Summerfield Road and Hoen Avenue, seems frozen in time, empty of patients and caregivers. The 53-year-old building is still cluttered with well-used waiting room chairs, beds and numerous pieces of diagnostic equipment, though it was delicensed as an acute-care facility several years ago.
To Social Advocates for Youth, however, this forlorn building looks like a dream. The 42-year-old nonprofit, known as SAY, hopes to assume ownership of the aging hospital and renovate it as housing for 18- to 24-year-olds, many transitioning out of the foster care system. SAY is calling the project the Dream Center, where the young people would sign leases and pay rent for the rooms, and where the organization would consolidate its administrative offices, counseling and youth employment programs currently located on Airway Drive in Santa Rosa.
Housing, counseling and jobs
Social Advocates for Youth was founded in 1971, when it was illegal for teens to run away from home for any reason. At that time, even minors fleeing abusive home environments were processed as criminals by law enforcement and sent to juvenile hall. A group of defense lawyers and community leaders who disagreed with that approach started SAY to act as a buffer between kids living on the streets and being locked up. They also set their sights on helping youths transitioning out of foster care at the age of 18, who were at risk of becoming homeless.
During its first year of operation in Sonoma County, SAY assisted 12 young people. Over the following four decades, the organization has helped more than 35,000 youths between the ages of 5 and 24 with housing, counseling and jobs—the three core objectives of its mission. SAY serves more than 2,000 young people every year, with a territory that ranges from Cloverdale to southeast of Sonoma.
Housing currently operated by SAY includes the Dr. James E. Coffee House Teen Shelter on Ripley Street in Santa Rosa. The six-bed shelter, now in its 22nd year, keeps 12- to 17-year-olds safe and off the streets, while also providing drop-in services for 18- to 24-year-olds, such as meals, clothing and personal hygiene supplies. Through SAY’s counseling services and a 24/7 crisis hotline, 94 percent of the teens who stay at the shelter are reunited with their families, and 68 percent of crisis calls are resolved without the youth needing to stay at the shelter.
SAY’s more ambitious housing program—and the pilot project for its Dream Center—is the Mary and Jose Tamayo Village on Yulupa Avenue in Santa Rosa. For the past eight years, this 25-bed, apartment-style facility has assisted young adults ages 18 to 24 with real-world responsibilities such as paying rent, finding employment and learning independent living skills.
“We have an 80 percent success rate of transitioning those tenants who pay rent and security deposits, helping them go through the application process and getting them into the next living situation that will stabilize their life, whether they’re employed or going to school,” explains SAY’s Executive Director Matt Martin.
Escalating homeless numbers
Motivation for the Dream Center was fueled in part, says Martin, by the dramatically escalating numbers of homeless youth in Sonoma County, from figures compiled every two years in a countywide tally. “We knew they were out there, but we didn’t know how many,” he says. “In 2009, on average, there were 268 homeless youth between the ages of 12 and 24 on the streets every night in Sonoma County. By 2011, the number had almost tripled, to 701. We said to ourselves, ‘This is not OK.’ So we started having a conversation with community leaders.”
SAY desperately needed to find additional housing for these youths, most of whom weren’t homeless by choice, according to Martin. “But we didn’t know if we should build a place or find something to renovate. That’s when one of our supporters stepped up and asked, ‘What about the old Warrack hospital?’”
Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa and its parent company, Sutter Health, had purchased the 69-bed Warrack hospital in 2001 to continue operating it as an acute-care facility. “But we closed it after a few years due to lack of demand for acute care services,” explains Lisa Amador, strategy and business development executive for Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa and Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation. In 2007, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital announced its intention to purchase the facility from Sutter, but that deal eventually fell through.
“Seeing Warrack sit empty for so long, just decaying, you start to think that maybe this will work. It doesn’t hurt to ask,” says Bill Friedman, co-owner and chairman of the board of Friedman’s Home Improvement and a long-time SAY supporter. He collaborated with Martin and a group of local businesspeople to approach Sutter about using the Warrack site for housing the SAY Dream Center.
“SAY approached Sutter about the use of the former Warrack Hospital,” explains Amador. “As a valuable service provider to the community, we thought donating the facility to SAY would go far to help solving a great need in our community.”
Sutter proposes to donate the entire building to SAY, along with the onsite parking lots, and then lease back the east wing of the campus, where Sutter still operates laboratory and outpatient imaging services. “Sutter will continue to provide lab, x-ray and Integrative Health and Healing services in the east wing of the former hospital, and Sutter physicians will continue to practice in surrounding medical office buildings on the property as they do today,” adds Amador.
According to Martin, Sutter is working with a Bay Area organization to inventory the older medical equipment still stacked up in the hospital’s rooms and hallways, in part to determine what could be donated to developing nations.
Repurposing patient rooms
During a recent tour of the Warrack facility led by SAY’s Director of Development Cat Cvengros, a group of 12 interested citizens strolled the corridors, peeked into rooms, asked pointed questions and visualized the old hospital’s potential for themselves. The existing structure will require predominately interior renovation before tenants could move in.
“SAY has submitted the conditional use application and rezoning application, and we hope to get in front of the city planning commission in January 2014,” Cvengros told the visitors in early October, acknowledging that the process may be precedent-setting for all involved.
“Nobody ever donated a hospital to us before,” she added with a laugh. “And Sutter told us, ‘Well, we’ve never donated a hospital before.’”
Martin says a vast majority of SAY’s work that would take place at the Warrack site is already being provided through currently existing programs. “What we propose to add to the mix of our counseling and job services is more badly needed housing. At Warrack, we would start the first year renting 40 units, which is only 15 more units than we have at Tamayo Village. By the third year, we hope to increase to a maximum of 63 units.”
The majority of the units, repurposed from what were patients’ rooms with private toilet facilities, would be affordable, unfurnished apartment-style living spaces, with an average length of stay of 18 to 24 months. Twelve of the units would be set aside for short-term housing of up to 90 days for those who can’t afford to pay rent. All of the young adults applying to live at the Dream Center would be subject to criminal background checks and a crosscheck against the Megan’s Law registry for sexual offenders. Those seeking short-term rentals must also pass drug and alcohol screening.
“The short-term rentals would be for transitioning youths from housing instability to stability,” says Martin. “By staying 90 days, they’re stabilized enough to be moved into an affordable housing situation.”
The tenants of the Dream Center would also be expected to uphold the safety and tranquility of the neighborhood by ceasing all outdoor activity before 9 p.m. and complying with noise ordinances set by the city of Santa Rosa.
Being a good neighbor
To address some vocal opposition from Bennett Valley neighbors toward the project, Martin points out that the Dream Center will not act as a walk-in emergency shelter for the homeless, will not provide any drop-in or tattoo removal services, and will not house gang members or any other young people with violent backgrounds.
“SAY’s Tamayo Village, which is just half a mile away from the Warrack site, has been a good neighbor for eight years, sharing a fence line with apartments and single-family residences, and it’s across the street from an elementary school and a church,” says Martin. “By and large, most neighbors aren’t even aware young people are living there. We’re prepared to be the same great neighbor at the Warrack site as we are at Tamayo Village and the Coffee House Teen Shelter.”
Yet the Dream Center proposal has some Bennett Valley residents riled to the point of publishing full-page advertisements in The Press Democrat to present their views. One opponent, attorney Charles T. Jensen, states in an ad: “I have personally spoken with more than 100 homeowners in the immediate vicinity of the proposed SAY/Warrack halfway house. It is the intention to oppose this half-way house at every administrative step. We believe our views will prevail. However, in the event the city of Santa Rosa agrees to go forward, we shall immediately seek injunctive relief until all issues can be fully litigated.”
Others quoted in the ad refer to the Dream Center as “a recipe for disaster” and “an ill-conceived project.” Another opponent states: “I believe you’ll be placing countless innocent people and their property at significantly greater risk. Rest assured, if this site is approved, crime will increase in this area and personal security for numerous hard working, tax paying citizens will decrease exponentially.”
The advertisement is attributed to a group known as Community Unite and refers people to www.santarosafirst.org for more details.
Calming the rhetoric
Steve Page is all too familiar with the type of controversial land-use process SAY is up against. The president and general manager of Sonoma Raceway vividly remembers when the racetrack south of the city of Sonoma spent four years—between 1997 and 2000—attempting to secure entitlements to remodel the venue. Page has been a SAY supporter for many years and sits on its advisory board.
“One of the things I bring to the Dream Center effort on an informal basis is that I’ve been through the land-use process,” says Page, referring to his earlier experience. “The racetrack had a fair number of opponents in the community—neighbors and otherwise—so I’m aware of the passion stirred in opposing a project, when logic and rational dialog frequently fall by the wayside.
“It’s unfortunate, some of the misinformation that’s being spread [about the Dream Center proposal], and when things are repeated often enough, people begin to believe them regardless if they’re based in fact,” he continues. “These SAY kids are being portrayed as monsters, but they’re capable of becoming wonderful, mainstream citizens.”
Speedway Children’s Charities, the nonprofit arm of Sonoma Raceway, raises money at various racetrack events throughout the year for designated beneficiaries that cater to the educational, financial, social and medical needs of children. Over the past decade, according to Page, the Sonoma County chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities has distributed close to $50,000 in grant funds to SAY.
“The Dream Center project is very ambitious,” Page says. “It’s rare and unique for an organization like SAY to have a facility like this available to it, so we have to educate the community about what a wonderful opportunity this is. Some of the opposition has its roots in passion and [opponents] wanting to be protective of their homes, but they seem to be blind to the realities of what’s proposed. To the extent that I can help calm the rhetoric and be involved in a rational evaluation of a great project, I’m there for SAY.”
Page emphasizes that the foster care system “is one of the great holes in our social services system, because foster kids who are suddenly moved out of stable homes at the age of 18 are in no way capable of fending for themselves. They’re not yet adults and not yet ready to tackle society on their own.”
Determining feasibility
Meanwhile, the number of homeless youth in Sonoma County continues to climb. When the 2013 homeless count was conducted, 1,128 children and young people (ages 12 to 24) were found. The largest increase was in the 18-to-24 age group, according to Martin. “And 86 percent of them are Sonoma County youth, not from other areas.”
Lisa Wittke Schaffner, former CEO of the Sonoma County Alliance and currently executive director of the John Jordan Foundation, is serving on the Dream Center’s feasibility committee to determine exactly what it would cost to fund the roll-out of the center and operate it long-term. She’s also been a long-time advocate for foster children and what happens when they transition out of the system at 18.
“I can’t imagine being handed $300 at the age of 18 and told to find somewhere else to live,” she says. “These are not bad kids and not homeless because they choose to be.”
At Tamayo Village, she says, where the young people pay rent, “that’s a pretty big responsibility. If they can pay rent, that’s impressive. It’s a facility for those who really do want a different life. They want to do well in life, and they want the other residents at Tamayo Village to succeed as well.”
Martin says every youth who seeks SAY’s services knows the organization has rules and expectations. “We’re creating taxpayers by helping them to get and keep jobs, and to give back to the system as opposed to just taking away,” he says. “They’re trying to turn their lives around and working hard to better their future.”
Schaffner calls the donation of Warrack hospital to SAY “an incredible gift. But it will take a lot of work to make it feel like a home.” She traveled with Martin last spring to Nashville, Tenn., to tour the Oasis Center, a four-year-old facility with some similarity to SAY’s vision for the Warrack site. “And that cemented it for me: Our Dream Center is a good project.”
A diamond in the rough
Martin says when SAY toured a group of young people through the old hospital to ask their opinion of it as a potential housing resource, they were asked, “What do you want to get out of this?” One young woman replied, “I want to get out of it everything I didn’t get at the dinner table.”
“So we want to create an environment at the Dream Center where everyone has a place at the table, so to speak—where they can be proud of it,” he says.
“We’re so pleased with this building, because it has the infrastructure for housing already in place. It’s almost a perfect fit,” adds Martin. “It’s just sitting there, stuck in a vacuum of space, a real diamond in the rough and a wonderful resource waiting to be used.”
