Martin, a controversial Napa public figure for four decades, said he and his wife, Mary, will move out of the South Napa Shelter at the end of next week to be closer to their daughter.

“We’ve been there to see it. It’s a beautiful place,” Martin, 72, said this week. 

The Martins moved into Napa’s adult shelter at the end of July after being evicted from their north Napa apartment. In mid-August, Harry Martin suffered strokes, leaving him mentally confused.

A group of people who admired Harry Martin’s work for 25 years as the publisher and editor of the Napa Sentinel have raised some $6,000 to subsidize the Martins’ rent in Sacramento.

The money will be paid directly to the Martins’ new landlord, assuring that they will have housing for many months to come, said Al Leveque, a friend and admirer. 

Supporters came up with housing options in Napa and in Lake County, but Harry and Mary decided to move to Sacramento to be near their adult daughter Amber, a Napa resident who is planning to move there herself, Leveque said.

Family support means a lot, Harry Martin said. “My mental condition isn’t so great, but I’m still going to live till I’m 95, so it doesn’t matter,” he said.

Mary Martin, who is 77 and needs a wheelchair, said she had resisted leaving Napa, but her daughter found a charming senior complex that was affordable. “We saw it and fell in love with it,” she said.

Coping with homelessness had stressed her to the breaking point, Mary Martin said. “I had a nervous breakdown, which is why I ended up in the hospital.”

That said, the South Napa Shelter has been more than accommodating, she said. After her husband’s stroke and her hospitalization, they were removed from the men’s and women’s dormitories and housed together in the two-bed sick bay, she said.

“I’m very grateful we had a place to stay all this time,” Mary Martin said. “We made some nice friends, actually.”

People who rallied to get the Martins out of the shelter were mostly people who liked The Sentinel’s advocacy for the underdog, Leveque said. “I thought he was a man of the people,” he said of Harry Martin.

“A lot of people liked the Sentinel,” said Mark Power, a businessman who ran one of Harry Martin’s two unsuccessful campaigns for mayor. “He just kept people honest.”

Martin continued to publish the Sentinel and report on the City Council while he served three terms and 12 years on the council. He last ran for council in 2010, losing to Juliana Inman and Peter Mott.

“I didn’t always agree with what Harry wrote,” Power said. “Some things were just preposterous — black helicopters coming out of caves on Oakville Grade. To this day, he insists that was true.”

His supporters are disappointed that Harry Martin is moving out of the county, Power said. “Certainly all of the committee were hoping he’d stay in Napa where there’s a support system for him,” he said.

Their departure dashes the hopes of many people to see the Napa Sentinel resume publishing, Leveque said. “The Sentinel is basically dead,” he said.