If you have driven on State Route 89A by Coffeepot Road in the past few days, you may have noticed someone standing with a sign advocating for the working homeless of Sedona. That someone is Zzenn Loren, formerly known as Chris Loren.
Loren has been the owner and operator of Sedona Irrigation for the past 15 years, after moving to Sedona 24 years ago.
In February, Loren was given a two-month notice before his landlord was to sell the house, specifically mentioning that it would probably be turned into a vacation rental property. After being asked to leave his home, Loren searched for a place all over the Verde Valley with no luck. Eventually he sold his work truck to live full-time out of his new van.
“I have a five-star business,” Loren said. “I show up, I do a good job. I service a lot of people in the town, exclusive to Sedona and the Village. And I’m living out in the desert.”
At his former home, Loren sublet the two other rooms in the West Sedona house. In April, the previous roommates were also forced to figure out where to go. Currently, one lives on the street, while the other one found a “miracle room” in Cottonwood.
“These [workers] are the nuts and bolts, not the tourists. The tourists are secondary. Yes, they bring in money,” Loren said. “But if nobody was working at [the stores], what would the tourists do? If there was nobody at the gas stations, what would the tourists do? Why do they have no place to live? Why are they not even getting paid enough to even afford something if it was available? And this thing is extremely backwards.”
And as he gets closer to his two-week camping limit in Coconino National Forest land, Loren is thinking of everything he can do to help the situation of many workers in Sedona. Loren has even thought about staging a walk-out so that businesses understand the importance of paying a fair wage in a town where rent is always increasing.
“Right away the awareness needs to be raised, so people start providing housing,” Loren said about why he has been protesting off of SR 89A. “We need some heroes in this town.”
But Loren and his former roommates are not the first to experience the difficult process of finding housing in Sedona. All over the city, employers struggle to fill their schedules as employees cannot find housing or simply are not interested in commuting into Sedona from other areas. Many of whom Loren has begun talking to work in Sedona yet live out near Forest Road 525.
“I would say the immediate fix would just drop this 14- day limit for workers,” Loren said. “And you should be able to distinguish that simply by having a place workers go. You can vet them and that way you’re supporting the local community.”
Many of these workers spend hundreds of dollars in gas a week, like Loren, to commute into Sedona for work.
Loren has not yet spoken to USFS about its 14-day limit for dispersed camping. Currently, the forest service is planning a large camping closure of the public land. This also includes monitoring campers’ license plates and asking them to leave for 16 days after their two-week stay.
“If someone is using the national forest for a place of residence, a [USFS] officer does have discretion at that time to cite someone, regardless of the 14-day limit, since using the national forest residential use is not allowed,” USFS Public Affairs Officer Brady Smith said. “Not that that will always be the case, but it is within their authority to do so.”
According to Forest Order #03-04-20-18, a car is included in the definition of a residence where someone is living or sleeping full or part time. The USFS also believes if people were to use the forest as a place of residence, it would lose its desired designation as public land.
“People need to understand the value of people working at places like Safeway or Bashas’,” Loren said. “You need to provide housing for those people who are only making peanuts. But unless they absolutely have to, [people in the city] won’t do anything.”
Loren has also been uploading his experience to his Youtube channel, Zzenn Loren. In the past few years, he has also been known for writing books about the New Age culture in Sedona and all over the nation.
