Closure of homeless veterans housing program in Sebastopol leaves raw feelings behind

At least 10 formerly homeless veterans had to find new housing when Robinson House in Sebastopol closed in early August. Some of the former clients feel let down and abandoned. |

A Sebastopol-based transitional housing program for homeless veterans shut down in the first week of August, forcing its residents to find other housing and leaving a gulf of raw feelings and differences of opinion in its wake.

When Santa Rosa-based Nation’s Finest — which is active in California, Arizona and Nevada — closed Robinson House in Sebastopol, at least 10 formerly homeless veterans had to find new housing.

The 3½-year-old program had offered residents up to two years of rent-subsidized housing, along with case management and a range of supportive services, such as budgeting and workplace skills training to mental health counseling.

Officials at Nation’s Finest — which lost its CEO and chief administrative officer in the same month for reasons that haven’t been explained — said the program was no longer financially sustainable because not enough of its 15 beds were filled.

Robinson House had been funded through a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs grant program that pays a certain amount each day for each resident.

In order to remain financially viable, according to Kendra Barter, Nation’s Finest’s chief programs officer, the home had to be 85% occupied. But between this past Octoberand May, Nation’s Finest had only been able to fill 60% of its beds.

“Over time, we just had to unfortunately make that decision” to close, Barter said in an interview Friday.

“It’s a loss,” said Michael Gause, Sonoma County’s Ending Homelessness manager. “It's always a loss when you lose beds.”

Low occupancy

Barter said different factors contributed to the occupancy problems, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic when other independent housing options opened up for homeless veterans.

For some reason, the inability to fill enough beds persisted, even despite the findings of a January survey in Sonoma County that determined there had been an increase in the number of homeless veterans in the region after several years of declines — from 110 in 2023 to 162 this year, a 47% increase.

Barter suggested this might be because people sometimes turn down programs like Robinson House.

Grant-per-diem programs such as Robinson House “have curfews and rules, and it's meant to be a sober living (place). (Residents) have to attend groups, and there are a lot of homeless veterans that did not want that structure,” Barter said. “It is treatment based … sometimes they come in and they decide, I don't want to do this and they leave.”

Former Robinson House residents said they were shocked by the news the program they’d been counting on to turn their lives around was closing, and feel they were hung out to dry.

“They just came in one day and said, ‘You guys got to leave,’ said Tom Sentementes, 61, who moved into the house in March. He said he’d been living in the woods in Lake County before connecting with Nation’s Finest.

“We had two years to get a job, to get money saved up, to get your feet on the ground. And that disappeared,” said Troy Allen Carver, who said he’d been in homeless in Santa Rosa since late 2023 after being swindled in Southern California out of a job as a caregiver and then being robbed in Fresno.

He’s now living in a Santa Rosa hotel, his rent paid by another Veterans Affairs program with which Nation’s Finest connected him. He said he now has to bicycle an hour to his job at the Sebastopol Whole Foods.

The veterans have had to scramble to find new homes and they’re missing the services they were relying on to get their lives in order.

“I don’t have squat anymore,” said former resident Robert Blair, speaking about the case managers who used to support his progress.

“Was I ready to go get a new apartment with a roommate, no,” said Blair, 50, who moved in a few months before the program closed. “Was I financially, mentally ready to do the adulting thing that I’ve been screwing up for the last 20 years, no. I thought I had a two-year place of stability and guess what?”

According to Barter, Nation’s Finest paid first month’s rent and security deposits, and purchased household supplies for four of the displaced residents; a security deposit, a bed and household supplies for another resident; partial rent and household supplies for a sixth resident; and is covering Carver’s hotel bill and the cost of his rental applications and daily food deliveries.

The other three residents said they didn’t need assistance, Barter said. None of those residents could be reached for comment.

Blair confirmed that the nonprofit paid his security deposit and first month’s rent but said it took a month for that payment to come through after he found an apartment with a roommate, who was also a former Robinson House resident.

Vets say services disappeared

Blair, Sentementes and Carver all said once the news was out about the program’s pending closure, most of the case management and transition services they’d been promised disappeared.

“There was nobody to go to, to turn to,” said Carver, who joined the program in January.

“These people did not help us out at all,” Sentementes said. “It was supposed to be staffed five days a week and on call for us all week long. They wound up not showing up.”

Barter said not all of the residents took advantage of the services that were made available.

“It's kind of a case-by-case basis. But every one of them were offered — we were not going to just dump them and get rid of them. That wasn't our plan,” Barter said. “I mean, if any of them wanted to discontinue, obviously they could have. But we do our best to try and offer those follow-up services.”

She and other Nation’s Finest officials said the veterans were given 90 days to find other places to live and the nonprofit took pains to make sure all of them ended up housed.

“We really did lean in and do everything possible to take care of every veteran,” said David Englin, a Nation’s Finest board member. “And one way or the other, every veteran who was in that facility — as it was closing — was ultimately housed thanks to our efforts.”

Former residents say some of them were pushed into housing they wouldn’t have chosen themselves.

“They had no choice but to go where they didn't want to be because they were pushing everybody so hard to get out,” Sentementes said.

Sentementes, who works at a Santa Rosa hardware store, said his new rent is $2,000 a month, compared to the maximum monthly rent of $447 he paid at Robinson House.

According to Barter, 79 veterans in total went through the Robinson House program, staying for an average of 163 days. Four of the final 10 clients are still enrolled in Nation’s Finest support programs, she said, while the others declined to take part.

Englin, himself a veteran, said the former residents’ feelings are understandable.

“There can be tough feelings when change happens and when you're in a situation and you have a certain idea of the way it's going to play out, and things go differently than your expectations,” Englin said. “I have nothing, nothing but empathy for these veterans. Which is why we work so hard to make sure that their needs are taken care of.”

Other programs untouched

The nonprofit has other Sonoma County programs that were not affected by the recent changes: Hearn House in Santa Rosa, a permanent supportive housing program for homeless veterans, and Windsor Veterans Village, a low-income housing development for veterans that also includes supportive services.

Nation’s Finest operates three other, similar housing programs in California. Those are in Eureka and Sacramento. Robinson House — named for the Sebastopol road it is located on — is the only one to be closed.

Barter said the 18-bed Eureka program, while currently meeting its occupancy goals, is struggling to do so because of the same issues.

Nation’s Finest remains a financially healthy entity, said Phil Williams, chair of its board of directors. He said the departures of CEO Chris Johnson and CAO Robert Charles, as Robinson House wound down operations, weren’t related to the closure.

Charles wanted to “move on and go work elsewhere,” Williams said.

Of Johnson, Williams added, “the decision to part ways with the CEO was a hard one but in the best interest of the organization. That's the decision that was reached.”

Reached by telephone in South Carolina, where he is based, Charles said, “I’m not allowed to comment at this time,” and hung up.

Johnson, who had led the nonprofit for five years, said only, “it was a tough decision and we agreed to part.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @jeremyhay