The radio antennas poised to spring up on poles around the North Bay may look innocuous, but are they really? A debate over the fifth generation of wireless cellular technology—known as 5G—ensues while deployment begins across the region. As residents and elected officials ask questions about the potential health impacts the wireless transmitter proliferation brings with it, some localities debate bans on the new hardware.

However, recent FCC rulings designed to ease the way for 5G (under the rubric of National Security) give municipal governments little ability to restrict the new–and–controversial additions to the physical landscape.

At issue are the small devices affixed to light poles or other vertical spots surrounding homes, offices and public spaces. Champions stress the benefits a speedier backbone for data–enabled objects will bring (See News, page 8). Everything from color–shifting light bulbs and eco–friendly thermostats to card swipers used by yoga instructors and dog walkers will perform with less digital lag time. Critics decry small–cell ubiquity as a bath of invisible, cancer–causing radio waves penetrating soft human tissues—and decry the absence of local control over the 5G juggernaut now afoot.

Resistance to the small–cell rollout is growing. In early 2018, Santa Rosa was forced to walk back a 2017 agreement that would have allowed Verizon to improve its network by installing 72 antennas on wooden power poles and streetlights around the city. City councils in San Anselmo, Mill Valley, Ross, San Rafael, Petaluma, Sebastopol and the City of Sonoma all tried to get in front of the issue with ordinances limiting where the devices could be placed.

Last September the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted new regulations to remove barriers to 5G deployment, exempting installation from environmental review, a move that prompted the backlash. The city of Fairfax and the County of Marin joined more than 25 West Coast cities in legal actions to challenge the FCC’s preemption. The court challenges bore some fruit. Last month, Oklahoma’s United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians won an order overruling the FCC’s attempt to prevent local environmental and historical reviews.

Members of the Sebastopol–based EMF Safety Network, founded by Sebastopol artist Sandi Maurer, recently marched through downtown San Rafael to bring visibility to the issue. There’s a robust and regional grassroots letter–writing campaign to put the kibosh on 5G, and numerous local governments have weighed in with hearings and ordinances pegged at the health concerns. The drive by “Big Telecom” to expand its wireless data capacity is not going as smoothly as it may have hoped in the communities north of the Golden Gate.

5G is quite different than the generations that preceded it. It uses a different type of microwave, with a much higher frequency that enables faster transmission of information and optimizes new autonomous gadgets that talk to one another.

The connective infrastructure of the so-called Internet of Things that raised concerns across the North Bay centers largely on the antennae that need to be deployed by the thousands for 5G to work. Owing to 5G’s wavelength, which is shorter and more powerful than its predecessors, the network requires that many radio broadcasting devices be installed—and that they’re located close to one another.

Epidemiologist Devra Davis is the director of the environmental think tank Environmental Health Trust. She’s written that 5G tech has the power to disrupt the flight patterns of bees and birds, and could also disrupt aircraft navigation. CBS news reported last May that the tech could interfere with weather forecasting.

5G is not simply a new generation of cell technology. It employs a powerful wavelength in the radio spectrum—higher frequency non–ionizing microwaves—to transmit the ever–growing volumes of data received and generated on smart devices. Promoted by the industry as being a hundred times faster than 4G, it will allow, for example, videos to be downloaded in seconds.

These so called “millimeter waves” are more powerful and shorter in length than current cell technology. The 5G system planned for the region requires many more cell towers closer together, including in residential areas.

Some 13 million towers would be needed nationwide, according to a recent report done by Google for the Department of Defense. “Ten cities are now online,” says Verizon spokeswoman Heidi Flato. “We hope to have 30 by the end of the year.” There’s lots of competition for the 5G business, she adds, with companies such as T-Mobile and AT&T pushing 5G plans of their own. “There’s definitely a race to 5G,” Flato says. “Verizon is ahead of its competitors and eager to deploy this technology.”

Small–cell towers are showing up cities and towns that are not yet “live.”

North Bay residents concerned about what they describe as negative health impacts of the new technology have pushed back against the proposed rollout.

Some 40 people showed up at the Sonoma City Planning Commission meeting on July 11 to oppose Verizon’s proposed installation of three towers in the city’s commercial hub. Many, but not all, say they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS). For them, health is the primary concern.

The Planning Commissioners says their hands are tied because of FCC regulations, dating back to 1996, that deny municipalities jurisdiction over the towers. Cities can only make decisions regarding the design of the cell towers, nothing more.

“There is no doubt that 5G will affect health,” says Dafna Tachover, citing the results of a $25 million study undertaken by the National Toxicology Program in 2017, which found a link between cumulative exposure to electromagnetic radiation and two rare types of brain cancer and DNA breaks.

Tachover was the Director of Information Technology for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) when she says she developed symptoms of electromagnetic sensitivity. This month she delivered her three–hour lecture in Sonoma, Napa and Santa Rosa, explaining the research that continues to implicate wireless as the cause of her illness.

Her City of Sonoma talk took place in a classroom at Vintage Senior Center with the fluorescent lights turned off, where she reeled off references to numerous scientific studies claiming 5G has significant health effects.

A study published two decades ago by the National Toxicology Program (NPT) found that the effects of radiation exposure are cumulative. Researchers at NPT found long–time wireless users may develop headaches, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia and brain cancer when exposed to wireless vibrations. EHS is now established as a disability by the nonprofit American Association of People with Disabilities.

In Santa Rosa, installation of the new towers was already in process before residents took note. Like other municipalities around the North Bay, city officials’ hands are tied when it comes to the FCC’s recent rulings.

Gabe Osburn, the deputy director of development services for Santa Rosa, explains that the city only has jurisdiction over poles in the public right of way—namely, streetlights. “The council gave us the authority to approve installation on a pole–by–pole basis,” he says. But the wooden poles are not in their jurisdiction.

Verizon proposed 72 poles for Santa Rosa. It contracted with the owners of the wooden poles, PG&E, and began installing cell towers in residential areas around town.

The city held two public meetings and halted streetlight deployment while officials figure out their next step. Other North Bay cities have taken action in an effort to assuage residents’ concerns. Mill Valley, Belvedere, Sonoma, Sebastopol, Petaluma, San Rafael, San Anselmo, and Fairfax have revised their telecommunications ordinances in an attempt to regulate the placement of the new towers, as did the Marin Board of Supervisors. These ordinances mainly regulate where cell towers may be installed and how close to one another they can be placed.

Petaluma’s ordinance is the strongest in the North Bay. It prohibits small–cell installation on city–owned poles, allows towers on electrical utility poles only in mixed–use commercial zones, (not in residential areas) and decrees a 1,500-foot setback from any two towers.

Assistant city attorney Lisa Tannenbaum says Petaluma sought to incorporate citizens’ concerns within the recently amended guidelines set by the FCC last spring.

“The industry claims that the guidelines give them more freedom,” she says, “but a suit in the 9th Circuit Court claims that the location of poles is beyond the jurisdiction of FCC. The FCC is responsible for regulating communications.” Resolution of this suit is expected by the end of the year.

San Jose and New York have sued the FCC to demand the amended guidelines be repealed.

“But even if those contested guidelines go into effect as written,” says Tannenbaum, “we believe we are still compliant.”

In California, Hillsborough, Piedmont and Danville banned 5G. They’re being sued by Verizon. In Sebastopol, Verizon yielded to citizen pressure and withdrew its applications for two new towers, thanks in part to the actions of the EMF Safety Network, a local nonprofit.

EMF Safety Network director Sandi Maurer says she began experiencing EHS symptoms in 2006. Finding no explanation for her discomfort, she called on Michael Neuwert, a local electrician who started researching the health effects of electromagnetism exposure in the 1980s. He came to her house to examine the wiring. “When he shut off the breakers, I immediately began to feel better.”

Maurer set out to learn all she could about the effects of EMF. In 2007, the Sebastopol City Council took up a popular proposal to provide free WiFi. Maurer began going to meetings. Despite her opposition, the council unanimously approved contracts to provide free WiFi but flip-flopped two months later and rescinded the contracts.

Maurer was more successful in her fight for an opt-out from smart meter installation, which also uses a pulsed–wireless technology. Now her organization is petitioning the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to block 5G. Sebastopol activist Rebecca Godbe-Tipp reports the supervisors “told us no one has complained about the cell towers.” There are no applications in the unincorporated areas yet.

“People say nothing can be done at the local level, but people really do have power. The science is already there, and we have a right to a safe community,” Maurer says.

In last year’s updated guidelines, the FCC ruled 5G towers would not be subject to two kinds of previously required review under the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). No public hearings were required.

In April, the California Court of Appeal cited the section of the 1996 law prohibiting towers in the public right of way if they “incommode” public use. The towers may be disallowed if they “generate noise, cause negative health consequences or create safety concerns. All these impacts could disturb public road use, or disturb quiet enjoyment.”

If the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledges the FCC does not control local infrastructure, that could support the fight for local control. In the meantime, the FCC’s attempt to usurp local control prompted legislation to restore municipal authority by Sen. Diane Feinstein (S. 2012) and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (HR. 530).

North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman is a co-signer on Eshoo’s bill. He says that while he’s “agnostic” on 5G and purported health issues associated with it, his emphasis is on localism and over-reach by the federal government on this issue. “I don’t like the idea of the federal government—and especially this administration, which consistently shills for big business— running roughshod over our communities. I trust my local government to do its job.”

Verizon hasn’t begun the big push for 5G antenna in the North Bay—at least not yet, says company spokeswoman Heidi Flato, “We have not announced 5G launch for the North Bay yet,” she says.

The small cells installed so far aren’t a signal that 5G has arrived, only that it will: They “pave the pathway for 5G,” she says. Verizon’s working now to densify its 4G LTE network, she adds. “There’s been a dramatic increase in data usage. If you think of cell network as a highway, commuter lanes jam up at certain times of the day.”

Small cells add more capacity, she says, as if you were adding more lanes to a highway. “People are using data–rich applications such as video streaming. Small cells will allow more people to do more things.”

Flato didn’t address health concerns raised by activists about 5G, and directed inquiries on that subject to the Wireless Industry Association website https://www.wirelesshealthfacts.com/

Activists vow to keep up the fight. Anti-5G Novato attorney Harry Lehman notes, “If cities have the courage, they can stop this.”

“It’s now established that this radiation is carcinogenic and harmful to health,” he says. “Cities that go along with the industry people are in direct conflict with their civic responsibilities.”

“During the Cold War, as you may be aware, the United States was involved in a very public space race with the Soviet Union,” says Galen Forrest. “Behind the scenes, however, a time race was taking place. The United States’ effort in this time race was known as the Kronos Initiative.”

According to Forrest, unbeknownst to most Sebastopol residents, the Kronos Initiative had a laboratory right in town, off the main drag. Today, that lab is the home of the Spacetime Travel Agency, a science-fiction themed escape room that’s become a popular immersive play experience for all ages.

Conceived, created and run by Sebastopol natives Galen and Aidan Forrest, the Spacetime Travel Agency opened in early 2019, and has already welcomed over a thousand groups, who partake in solving a series of puzzles over the course of an hour aimed at uncovering the secrets of the Kronos Initiative.

New Game

For a generation that grew up traversing video game dungeons, escape rooms have caught on in the last decade as a physical alternative to staring at screens for fun.

“It’s interesting that we ended up running an experience that comes out of video games, because we only played video games at friends’ houses,” says Galen Forrest. “The emphasis was on doing things outdoors, making things by hand.”

Raised in West Sonoma County, the brothers both attended Santa Rosa High School, where Galen studied video arts and Aidan attended drama classes as part of the school’s ArtQuest program. Eventually, Aidan got into welding and robotics, while Galen pursued a film degree at UC Santa Cruz and worked in various art departments in Los Angeles.

For the Forrest brothers, escape rooms became an obsession after they played their first one three years ago.

“We were actually late to the game,” says Galen. “We had heard about it, but then didn’t play one for awhile.”

It was on a family trip in London that the brothers finally made their way into their first escape room, and they were immediately hooked.

“We booked another one before the end of the day and from there we quickly started knocking around ideas of what if we made one, what would it be?”

Outside the Box

The origins of escape room games date back to the late 2000s, though the exact history is a bit murky; some enthusiasts claim that escape rooms were born in East Asia while others maintain their genesis was in Eastern Europe. Escape room owners and fans, however, unanimously agree that the United States was the last country to catch on. One of the very first stateside escape rooms came by way of Japan, making landfall in San Francisco in 2011.

The concept of escape rooms has grown so popular in the Bay Area that an entire blog is now dedicated to reviewing and ranking the best rooms across the region—escaperoomtips.com.

“In terms of the industry as a whole, escape rooms in America are still in the infant stages—a lot of mom-and-pop investments by hobbyists and enthusiasts,” says Nick Schilbe, entrepreneur and CEO of Off the Couch Games in Santa Clara. “What we’re seeing now in the industry is that to become extremely popular and profitable—and what I think we will see in the future—is massively increasing the quality of escape rooms. The technology to make high production rooms is available; it simply costs more.”

In the next five years, Schilbe predicts that escape rooms will not only take over as a main source of entertainment, but will also transform many of the modern marketing tactics employed by media companies and the entertainment industry as a whole. As entertainment providers like Netflix and Hulu continue to compete in an increasingly saturated and content-heavy industry, escape rooms will become the next vehicle to help promote new films, TV shows and consumer goods in general, he says.

“My forecast is that there will be a diversification in movie budgets—whether its marketing or production—for entertainment that we can’t reproduce in our own homes,” Schilbe says. “We can reproduce movies and video games, but not escape rooms. I think they’ll become the de facto form of entertainment in the future, especially with the higher production quality that we’re seeing with games out there.”

Space & Time

“We knew we wanted to do it in Sonoma County,” says Galen Forrest of the SpaceTime Travel Agency. “We thought about how much we would have liked something like this growing up.”

Originally the brothers were looking at warehouses in Santa Rosa, then a space became available on South High Street near the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and they jumped at the chance to operate the escape room in Sebastopol.

“It’s more central than a lot of escape rooms,” he says. “Santa Rosa wanted us to be in industrial (area) if we were doing it, because it’s treated the same as a bowling alley or an arcade in terms of zoning. The Sebastopol head planner understood we’re weren’t a bowling alley. So, that was really nice to be able to be so central.”

For the science-fiction theme of the escape room, the brothers decided to build on a single time travel-based narrative that was told through the completion of the puzzles, and the mission of the room extends beyond simply trying to get out of it. Along the way, a helpful robot named Otto guides the groups of three-to-five players in their quest, which features several puzzle mechanisms that are both challenging and engaging.

“In general, people approach puzzles differently, so everyone is going to have their strengths and weaknesses,” says Galen Forrest. “Playing as a team rounds that out and each player is able to contribute when it makes sense.”

Keen-eyed players may find puzzles that pull inspiration from various science-fiction movie tropes, though the narrative behind the escape room is a welcomed array of original characters, concepts and adventures that are accessible to anyone who loves a good mystery.

“It’s been across the board,” says Galen Forrest about the groups who come to experience the escape room. “There have certainly been more families than we expected, which has been great. In a day, we’ll have families with pre-teen kids, groups of millennials, groups of older people, some groups who don’t always know what they’re getting into.”

Escape rooms have also become popular as corporate team-building exercises. “It is good for team building because it requires teamwork in communication, critical thinking and creative problem-solving,” says Forrest.

Yet, at its core, Forrest says that their escape room is an opportunity for adult play. “Being presented with the unexpected and playful is something people don’t normally get to experience,” he says. “And they get a kick out of it.”

The Spacetime Travel Agency is open Wednesday-Sunday by appointment. Book a mission at spacetimetravelagency.com. Avi Salem contributed to reporting for this story.

Faced with an ongoing affordable-housing crisis and a severe waitlist for residents receiving government housing assistance, the Santa Rosa City Council is considering a policy to help some of the city’s most vulnerable renters find housing more quickly.

On Sept. 24, the council will vote on a proposed ordinance to ban landlords from discriminating against prospective renters who use federal housing assistance vouchers through a program called Section 8.

Under the program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awards vouchers to low-income individuals and families. Local agencies, in this case the Santa Rosa Housing Authority, distribute the vouchers to local applicants.

Although the process sounds simple, there is a lot of waiting involved. According to Carmelita Howard, the city’s deputy director of housing and community services, the Santa Rosa Housing Authority only opens its wait list once every two years, and applicants are on the list for an average of eight years.

Once they have qualified for a voucher, tenants still struggle to find a residence within the allotted time period—60 days after receiving a voucher—in part because many landlords choose not to rent to voucher holders, considering them more burdensome than other tenants. The vouchers come in two forms: one is a general voucher that can be used by a tenant wherever they might find a willing landlord; the other is a site-specific voucher that pays the rent in an identified housing unit.

Although landlords are paid the market rate for the unit, a voucher-holder’s rent is paid by the local housing agency rather than directly from the tenant. Some landlords say the prospect of registering with a government agency and undergoing property inspections makes renting units on the open market a better deal. Persistent, although often untrue, stereotypes of voucher holders make matters worse as well.

The practice of not renting to voucher holders, known as “source of income” discrimination, is allowed under federal rules while other forms of housing discrimination—based on race, religion, sex and other factors—are illegal.

Still, discrimination against voucher users is widespread.

A 2018 report studying housing voucher discrimination in five American cities by the Urban Institute, a policy think tank, found that 76 percent of landlords in Los Angeles discriminated against voucher users.

Overall, the authors of the report responded to an average of 39 advertisements before identifying one advertised unit whose owner considered renting to a voucher recipient.

At the local level, voucher users and housing activists offered stories of their own during a council meeting last month.

“In the past month, we have had three clients who are disabled, senior veterans who are unable to use their vouchers because of this kind of discrimination,” says Shelley Clark, a housing policy attorney at Legal Aid. “Many other jurisdictions across the state have enacted this type of ordinance. The policy has been litigated and vetted [by those jurisdictions],”

Beatrice Camacho, a tenant organizer with the North Bay Organizing Project who grew up in Section 8 housing, says passing the anti-discrimination law is “the right thing to do.”

“This is a personal issue for me,” Camacho says. “I was able to grow up in a safe environment. But I think about what would have happened if my parents had been discriminated against because they were voucher holders.”

There are more than 1,400 Housing Choice Voucher users in Santa Rosa, according to Howard.

Because many people experiencing homelessness—87 percent in the latest county count—lived in Sonoma County before moving onto the streets, an improved housing voucher pipeline could help decrease the homeless population.

This is not the first time the city has rejected source-of-income discrimination legislation. In June 2015, the city council directed staff to study the proposed policy change but nothing came of it.

Councilmember Julie Combs, who backed both the 2015 and 2019 proposals, sees the legislation as part of an overarching effort to end discrimination against people living in poverty.

While discrimination against voucher holders has been around for a long time, local ordinances to ban the practice picked up steam in the past year. Los Angeles and San Jose both passed similar policies over the summer.

All told, 16 Californian cities and counties have already passed similar ordinances, according to Howard’s presentation. If passed, Santa Rosa’s law would be the first banning “source of income” discrimination in Sonoma County.

At a state level, State Senator Holly Mitchell introduced legislation—Senate Bill 329—to ban source-of-income discrimination statewide. The bill passed the state Senate but still needs to pass the Assembly.

The California Apartment Association, which represents the state’s rental owners, opposes SB 329, arguing the bill would be an unfair regulatory burden on apartment owners.

On Friday, Aug. 30, the bill was approved by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Combs says the city council will still consider a local ordinance, whether or not the state legislation is passed.

Among the roughly 25 public speakers at the council meeting, several landlords and property managers spoke against the item, asking for city council members to offer more incentives for landlords to support the legislation.

“The ordinance is bad at a very high level. The way it’s written, the incentives are not there for housing providers … the outreach was not there in any sort of significant measure,” Keith Becker, a local property manager, said at the meeting.

After over an hour of public comment, mostly in support of the policy as written, the council agreed to move the item to its Sept. 24 meeting, citing a lack of outreach to stakeholders.

“I don’t think win-win is possible all the time, but I think we can do more to make this work for renters and landlords,” Councilmember Combs said at the August meeting.

Councilmember Chris Rogers asked city staff to return in September with a “menu of options” to win support for the law from landlords.

Examples of such incentives can be found in Marin County.

In 2016, the Marin County Housing Authority launched the Landlord Partnership Program, which started as a two-year pilot program to increase the supply of homes available to voucher-holders in part by providing incentives to landlords.

“With a vacancy rate of 2 percent, high rents and a negative perception of Section 8, [the Housing Authority’s] clients were losing their vouchers because they could not find a unit,” a report summarizing the program states.

The incentives in Marin’s program included providing security-deposit assistance for voucher holders and compensation for landlords who were left with an empty apartment while waiting for a new Section 8 tenant, as well as reimbursements for landlords who claimed a voucher holder damaged their rental property.

Councilmember Combs says that, while she does not believe Section 8 voucher holders damage their rentals very often (if at all), she is still willing to consider setting up a Damage Mitigation Fund—a pool of money to reimburse landlords—in order to win broader support.

“I don’t anticipate that it will be needed,” says Combs, “but it doesn’t hurt to put some money aside.”

The Marin Housing Authority came to a similar conclusion.

“Although this is not a common occurrence, it is unfortunately a stigma our clients face,” the Marin Housing Authority report says about the perception that Section 8 tenants are more likely to trash rental properties.

The program could help increase the number of landlords renting to voucher recipients in Santa Rosa. Between 2016 and 2018, the Marin Housing Authority was able to add 90 new landlords who rent to voucher holders.

Combs says she hopes to deal with this concern at the council’s Sept. 24 meeting, when the council will also consider overhauling the city’s rental inspection program. In addition to mandating regular rental inspections rather than inspections based on complaints, Combs hopes the changes will reduce the amount of time landlords need to wait for an inspection.

Section 8 discrimination is a vexing problem, says Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, and one his county has pledged to resolve with its landlord-protection ordinance that was just budgeted another $450,000. Not only does the Marin program provide backup for landlords, it also draws a page from the housing-first supportive-housing model: Section 8 tenants also get visits from case managers as part of the program. The county’s problems are not dissimilar to Sonoma’s: “People have the vouchers, but can’t find the housing,” Rodoni notes.