Good Samaritan told to stop providing water to homeless camp

Woman told to stop giving water to homeless

Despite a heat wave stretching through the Bay Area, a woman in Marin County who works to provide clean water to homeless residents in encampments by Highway 101 in Novato was told by city officials to stop doing such.

NOVATO, Calif. - Homeless people can make do without a lot of things. But no one can make do without an adequate supply of water. Marin County, one of the nation's richest counties, is where one woman has been told to stop providing water to a major homeless encampment along northbound Highway 101.

Binford Road along Highway 101 just north of Novato's town center is a long-time homeless encampment; almost 80 folks mostly in cars, trucks and RVs with no shade, making it very hot in summer, especially with no immediate water source.

Though some folks here have jobs, they cannot afford an apartment or home.

"The Covid and also, my mother passed away and I was left to the street with our RV. We need water because we don't have any shade. It's very hot, dehydrating." said Bonnie.

Bonnie and her dog Eli have lived here in her minivan for about a year.

Tara Evans, a mother, a homeless advocate, archaeologist, and anthropologist, put it this way: "Nobody should have a barrier to access potable drinking water."

Every week or so, Evans drives her big pickup truck from her coast-side home, brings a human food grade water tank with 325 gallons of lab-tested water, and fills containers and RV tanks for the residents to drink, cook, clean, and bathe with.

Residents told Evans the meager amount of water occasionally provided by the county was in tiny single-use plastic bottles.

"Some of it had been delivered in the sun. If the resident was not home, they felt that it tasted funny. Their concern was that some of this water had a plastic taste to it," said Evans.

The Director of the Marin County Homeless Agency told Evans to stop making deliveries in the interests of health and safety, even suggesting possible legal consequences.

"I was flabbergasted. I was shocked. There were people in need and in over a hundred-degree weather that were suffering," said Evans.

"I don't understand why he would not want us to have water. I mean I think we should all be treated equally," said Bonnie.

To Evans, it's all about caring.

"It's my belief that we do need to care for one another, and it's in a compassionate world that we want to raise our children in," she said.

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