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MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2018 • SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA • PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM

BROKEN | A YEAR IN THE LIFE

Living on the streets takes a toll on Michelle Last and Steve Singleton
Mikhail Gorbachev

Nuclear
treaty
tensions
mount
High stakes in Moscow
talks amid Trump threat
to exit 1987 INF pact
By JIM HEINTZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW — U.S. National Se-

curity Adviser John Bolton fac-
es two days of high-tension talks
in Moscow beginning today af-
ter President
Donald Trump
announced his
intention to
withdraw from
a landmark nu-
In April 2017, Michelle Last and Steve Singleton set up camp in the dense brush behind the Chanate Historic Cemetery in Santa Rosa until mud
clear weapons
from rains forced them to move to a new camp along Santa Rosa Creek near Memorial Hospital.
treaty.

‘I can’t do
Trump’s an-
n o u n c e m e n t John
SECOND OF that the United Bolton
TWO PARTS States would
leave the Intermediate-Range
ABOUT THIS Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty
brought sharp criticism on Sun-

this anymore’
By MEG McCONAHEY THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
PROJECT: Homeless
camps have emerged
into raw view on Sonoma
County’s streets in the
past year — a complicated
and persistent problem,
underscored by drug
use, violence and filth
besetting one locale after
another. As public com-
passion began to wane,
| PHOTOS BY ERIK CASTRO FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT photographer Erik Castro
day from Russian officials and
from former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed
the treaty in 1987 with President
Ronald Reagan.
Trump said Russia has vio-
lated terms of the treaty that
prohibit the U.S. and Russia
from possessing, producing or
test-flying ground-launched
nuclear cruise missiles with a

W
herever they land, they nest. Over the course of a year, starting
in early 2017, Michelle Last and Steve Singleton move more than
a dozen times, schlepping from one underpass to another and
from one hidden campsite to the next.
In April last year they settle into a sylvan
glade behind the old potter’s field cemetery off
Chanate Road. They weave an elaborate fence
of twigs and leaves to conceal their tent. But
rains turn their lush Garden of Eden into a
muddy mess. In May, they scout a spot across
from Memorial Hospital beside Santa Rosa
Creek. Eventually they’re discovered by police,
who give them 72 hours to move. They shift to
what they hope is a more hidden spot nearby.
That also is discovered. This time, Steve is given
10 minutes to drag everything up on a tarp,
even with his torn shoulder.
Sick of the constant displacement and threat
of arrest, they decide it will be safer outside
the city limits. By summer, they carve out an
This story originally appeared in
the September-October issue of
Sonoma magazine.
set out to chronicle the
lives of homeless couple
Michelle Last and Steve
Singleton, who he met on
Valentine’s Day in 2017.
Teamed up with writer
Meg McConahey and
editor Corinne Asturias,
elaborate homestead in the blackberries beside Castro captured a textured
a pond in the creek. With a level and power and intimate story of the
tools, Steve constructs what amounts to a cabin, couple’s daily existence —
complete with door. Twice they’re told to tear jobs, illness, home-build-
it down. Each time Steve, undeterred, rebuilds ing and family life. Their
further downstream. Only after the third time parallel world is all but
at the end of summer do they admit defeat and invisible to those living
head back into downtown 6 miles away. in conventional housing
A desperate Michelle confesses to feeling like nearby. But in photos
she’s on the verge of a breakdown. “I’m tired. I and words, their troubled
can’t do this anymore,” she says from her camp relationship emerges,
back under the overpass. “It’s killing me. I’m along with the realization
too old for this. And it doesn’t seem like it’s that shelter from the
going to end.” streets does not guarantee
a happy ending.
TURN TO YEAR » PAGE A6
range of 300 to 3,400 miles.
Russia has repeatedly denied
allegations that it has produced
and tested such a missile.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ser-
gei Ryabkov was quoted as tell-
ing state news agency Tass that
leaving the treaty “would be a
very dangerous step.”
It would “cause the most se-
rious condemnation from all
members of the international
community who are committed
to security and stability.”
Konstatin Kosachev, head of
the foreign affairs committee in
Russia’s upper house of parlia-
ment, said on Facebook that a
U.S. withdrawal from the treaty
would mean “mankind is facing
full chaos in the nuclear weap-
ons sphere.”
“Washington’s desire to turn
back politics cannot be support-
ed. Not only Russia, but also all
who cherish the world, espe-
cially a world without nuclear
weapons, must declare this,”
Gorbachev was quoted as tell-
ing the Interfax news agency.
TURN TO TREATY » PAGE A2

The high toll of pregnancy discrimination

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
AND NATALIE KITROEFF
NEW YORK TIMES
MEMPHIS, Tennessee — If you are
a Verizon customer on the East Coast,
odds are good that your cellphone or
tablet arrived by way of a beige, win-
dowless warehouse near Tennessee’s
border with Mississippi.
Inside, hundreds of workers, many
of them women, lift and drag boxes
weighing up to 45 pounds, filled with
iPhones and other gadgets. There is
no air-conditioning on the floor of the
warehouse, which is owned and oper-
ated by a contractor. Temperatures
there can rise past 100 degrees. Work-
ers often faint, according to interviews
with 20 current and former employees.
One evening in January 2014, after
eight hours of lifting, Erica Hayes ran
to the bathroom. Blood drenched her
jeans.
She was 23 and in the second tri-
mester of her first pregnancy. She had
spent much of the week hoisting the
warehouse’s largest boxes from one
conveyor belt to the next. Ever since
she learned she was pregnant, she had
been begging her supervisor to let her
work with lighter boxes, she said in an
interview. She said her boss repeated-
ly said no.
She fainted on her way out of the
bathroom that day. The baby growing
inside of her, the one she had secretly
hoped was a girl, was gone.
“It was the worst thing I have ever
experienced in my life,” Hayes said. MIRANDA BARNES / NEW YORK TIMES
Chasisty Bee holds a baby blanket she kept in memory
TURN TO PREGNANCY » PAGE A2 of her 2014 miscarriage in Memphis, Tennessee, Oct. 8.

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Crossword B7 Lotto A2 Obituaries A5 State news A5 Mexico, allowed to proceed toward U.S. / A8 THE WEATHER, B8
A6 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2018

BROKEN | A YEAR IN THE LIFE

Steve Singleton cradles his grandson Brett during a Christmas 2017 visit to the Forestville home of his son Chad and daughter-in-law Alli.

While still living on the streets, Michelle Last found work as an usher at the
Sonoma County Fair. That led to a job with a private security company.

As a leader and de-facto manager of Last Chance Village, a temporary homeless

camp off Sebastopol Road in west Santa Rosa, Steve Singleton is an advocate for
the homeless. He works the phones and mediates arguments and fights.

Left, Last and Singleton embrace after they both spoke during a press conference
organized by homeless advocates at Last Chance Village.

YEAR don’t know how to make a

change to make it better for her
because who can afford $1,200 a
CONTINUED FROM A1 month rent?”
she’s tooling all over the county
and the Bay Area, to everything
from the Sausalito Art Festival
to Fleet Week to the Dickens
once a week on the phone and
periodically get together. A
younger son, Brandon, 23, lives
tensions that can blow up into
violent arguments. They don’t
want to be there but have hit a
near Lake Tahoe. wall. There is no place to go.

I H
n late summer, they get an
offer to share a two-bed-
room house with a friend on
property west of town for $600
a month. The hitch? The owner
can’t take dogs and Michelle,
several months earlier, had
adopted a pit bull puppy for
comfort, companionship and
protection. She refuses to go
without her Missy. But that’s
Steve’s shoulder injury
early in the year has made him
unable to work, so the pair ekes
out a living recycling. They
approach the job profession-
ally, targeting neighborhoods,
houses and businesses that
are particularly fertile. It’s a
night shift that can leave them
exhausted the next morning.
With flashlights and gloves,
they root through the blue bins
Fair in Daly City, where she
mixes with costumed charac-
ters of 19th-century England.
Michelle takes pride in her
work and develops a growing
confidence, aided by a new
friendship with a co-worker
who drives her to gigs and pro-
vides a refuge during frequent
fights with Steve. She likes this
other life, where no one knows
she goes home to a tent.
Michelle has four grandsons,
three by her oldest daughter,
Connie Christiansen, 28, and
one by her son Nickolas, 23.
Both live in Washington, where
she grew up with her father
after her own mother died. She
says she and Nickolas were
estranged for several years but
recently reconciled and recon-
nected through Facebook.
As winter sets in, the couple
omeless advocates say
Steve has always found
a way to be a leader
wherever he landed, and Last
Chance Village is no excep-
tion. Steve becomes a de-facto
manager of the camp, working
the phones, mediating argu-
ments and fights, taking calls
from people wanting informa-
tion and communicating with

not the only problem. One day
while visiting and watching TV
in the friend’s cottage, Steve
suddenly panics. Sweating, all
he can think is that he needs to
get out.
He is perplexed by conflict-
ing demons — discomfort with
being inside and the fear of
getting a home only to lose it.
“It makes me sad thinking
this. Sometimes I feel better
out here than I do in a house.
But then again, my poor wife is
out here sleeping on this dirt,”
he laments. “I feel bad. I really
only, trying to be considerate
and not wake sleeping resi-
dents. Some leave out bags of
recyclables for them, knowing
they’ll be by. Their efforts can
yield up to $70 on a good night.
When the Sonoma County
Fair rolls around, Michelle
lands an ushering assignment
at the horse races. In shades
and staff shirt, she’s in her
element. She’s efficient and
loves the work, which leads to
an $11 an hour job part-time job
with Praetorian, a private secu-
rity company. By late summer
S
teve and Michelle both
have adult children and
make an effort to stay in
touch. Steve’s oldest, Chad, 29,
couldn’t be more different than
his dad. He has a good job over-
seeing programs for the Sono-
ma County Water Agency, is
working on his master’s degree
and bought a home last year in
Forestville with his wife, Alli.
In September 2017 the couple
present Steve with his first
grandchild, and he’s bursting
with pride. Father and son talk
is forced over to Last Chance
Village, a homeless encamp-
ment behind the Dollar Tree
in Roseland that mushroomed
after the city shut down
homeless settlements through-
out Santa Rosa. Desperation
among the displaced grows.
They are now competing with
fire victims who themselves
were on the margins, before
the October disaster consumed
more than 6,000 dwellings in the
North Bay. Steve and Michelle
settle in. It’s crowded, muddy
and noisy and seething with
homeless advocates and attor-
neys. He travels by bike to City
Council meetings each week
to stand before the council and
argue the needs of his commu-
nity. Michelle steps up as sec-
retary, trying to establish some
order and written agreements
to manage the flow of homeless
into the growing tent city.
Steve thinks that six months
in a shelter isn’t nearly enough
time to get out of homeless-
ness. And he’s come to believe
TURN TO YEAR » PAGE A7
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2018 A7

BROKEN | A YEAR IN THE LIFE

Winter weather forced Michelle Last

and Steve Singleton to move into Last
Chance Village, a homeless camp in
Roseland. In early April, the couple
quickly packed up belongings to move
to a room at the Palms Inn on Santa
Rosa Avenue.

“A year ago, everything was different. And now that I look

back, I realize that a year can do a lot to a person.”
MICHELLE LAST, in a July Facebook post

Michelle Last and Steve Singleton embrace a few minutes after they enter their new home in April 2018, a room at the Palms Inn on Santa Rosa Avenue. In early June, Michelle threw Steve
out of the apartment after a dispute. He was later charged with domestic violence.

YEAR Michelle is quavering as she

CONTINUED FROM A6
that having a more permanent
place to camp, without being
run off constantly, is what
people need to get back on their
feet. He argues they need a sta-
ble place to set up camp, to free
them from the need to “spend
every minute trying to figure
out how to survive.”
“I want to see something
positive out here. I want a place
where people can settle down
and focus on themselves. Focus
on what they got to do,” he says.
reads a speech she wrote out in
neat longhand. “Being home-
less is a very hard life,” she
says, hoping to soften one per-
son’s heart. “You have to carry
your belongings everywhere
you go, trying to find a place
to hide it. If you’re not careful
your stuff can get stolen or
thrown away. … You can get a
ticket for illegal camping or ob-
structing a sidewalk. How hard
is it to think that something
bad happened in a person’s life
to where they lost their home
and now are homeless? We are
human just like you.”
Steve and Michelle have
Steve confesses to feeling
“weird.” He’s grown so adapted
to life outside.
“I’m kind of scared I won’t be
able to stay inside,” he says.
“I haven’t slept in a bed for a
while. I don’t know what I feel.
I’m happy for my wife. She’s
inside. … It’s good to be home.
I want in two years to try to be
somewhere else, but right now
this is better than where we’ve
been. We’ve got a place to shut
the door and call home.”
Michelle regards the air
conditioning, the bathroom,
the queen-sized bed with a real
mattress after several months
sleeping on milk crates. “I feel
EPILOGUE
Steve and Michelle did not find
happiness together in their new
home. In early June, after a fight, Mi-
chelle’s friend Martina Boudrot called
police on her behalf. Michelle threw
Steve out of the apartment and he
was charged with domestic violence.
In securing a temporary restraining
order against him, Michelle alleged
Steve threw a bottle at her. She threw
a bottle back at him, then he grabbed
her eye. “I am scared for my life,” she
wrote.
In the legal paperwork, Michelle
outlined a series of assaults by Steve
going back to 2016, including slam-
ming her head against the wall of the
She moved to a new room at
the Palms with her dog, Missy, and
continues to work security, winning a
$1.50 an hour raise. Her thin frame is
a little fuller, and she cut and colored
her hair from blond to red. She is dat-
ing a man she has known for a long
time. He is not homeless and treats
her well, she says. But she’s taking it
slow, acknowledging that she needs
to figure out how to have a healthy
relationship.
Michelle and Steve’s friend Vinny
Hayes died in June last year.
Michelle maintains contact with
few people from her life on the
streets. In some ways it seems like

O
n Valentine’s Day this
year, advocates hold a
press conference hoping
to draw attention to the plight
of camp residents as the city
makes plans to close it down
with no alternative location,
once again sending people
scurrying and scattering in a
community where there are few
places left to hide. Both Steve
and Michelle are key speakers.
long hoped to get a room in
the Palms Inn on Santa Rosa
Avenue, run by Catholic Char-
ities. They see it as a bridge
from life on the run. With only
days before the city is set to
shut down the Roseland camp,
throwing them back onto the
streets, they learn their names
have come up. They have a few
hours on April 2 to break camp
and board a shuttle to claim
their room and bath.
like I’m on vacation,” she says
in wonderment, “but it’s mine.”
Neither Steve nor Michelle,
however, is jubilant. Their joy
is tempered by concern about
those who are still out there.
They feel like their work isn’t
done. Michelle is concerned
that others will think she and
Steve are abandoning them.
“I don’t feel right,” Michelle
says, fighting tears. “It’s not
fair to all the other ones.”
underpass and stomping on her chest
and face.
A deeply depressed Steve went
back to the streets, writing on social
media, “I never meant to hurt my
soul partner.” He continued to try
to contact Michelle in person and
through social media. By mid-
August he was in Sonoma County Jail,
charged with violating the protective
order and domestic violence. He will
be released in November, leaving
Michelle nervous and on edge.
long ago and far away. But sometimes
that old world calls to her in haunting
ways.
“There are times when I kind of
wish I was still outside,” she reveals.
“When I’m out there working and by
myself and I smell the air. Then I look
at the weather and wonder, ‘Where
was I at this time last year? What
was I doing?’ The rains are going to
be coming soon. I think about all the
people still out there and wonder,
‘Where are they going to go?’ ”