AS SAN RAFAEL PREPARES to relocate its homeless population from downtown to an interim housing facility this fall, the City Council in a special session last week took steps to prevent new campers from moving in to the areas that will be left vacant.

No new camping is allowed along Andersen Drive between Lindaro Street and Irwin Street, including all adjacent public properties. Trees and boulders will replace an open strip of land, and the definition of city property was expanded to include an open space adjacent to the interim housing site in the Terra Linda neighborhood. Previously, the block along Andersen was the only place where camping was allowed under existing regulations. According to John Stefanski, San Rafael assistant city manager, the new ban will immediately prohibit new campers. Then, after people are relocated to the interim housing site, camping will be expressly prohibited going forward, he said.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.