Why Sacramento utterly fails to address homelessness was revealed on Tuesday | Opinion

About six months ago, the Sacramento City Council decided to hold a workshop to assess the state of homelessness in the capital of California. That session was held Tuesday afternoon, revealing a moment in time, clarifying Sacramento’s worsening humanitarian crisis, the city’s response via increasing enforcement, and the cooperation — or lack thereof — between city and county.

It also revealed a city and its residents are increasingly at odds on how to deal with the issue. It is a fight between those urging outreach and those demanding enforcement — and the council was caught in the middle, satisfying neither and angering both.

“These issues are not new to the city of Sacramento, we are not starting from scratch,” said Mayor Darrell Steinberg to start the meeting. “The city, because of its efforts over the last several years … now contracts for and funds 1,100 temporary shelter beds every night. We’ve also stood up a Department of Community Response, with 20-plus employees who are engaged in daily outreach on the streets of Sacramento.”

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And yet, the prevailing attitude from residents is that the city hasn’t done enough. The meeting’s public comment period gave the distinct impression of an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole.

On one side were residents who are afraid to walk the city’s streets and trails alone or at night, afraid to take off their shoes and run in the parks in fear that they might step on used hypodermic needles. They’re afraid to raise their children in Sacramento because those children may have to walk to school past unchecked encampments.

Business owners are afraid to open up shop in the morning only to find some fresh new horror has occurred overnight, and residents are increasingly becoming afraid to live in the city, thanks to what they perceive as a preponderance of unchecked mental illness, drug use and criminal activities.

On the other side are residents who are angry at mass human suffering without a solution. They’re angry about the dehumanization of homeless people, the constant deaths every winter and summer, and the bodies of vulnerable people laying in the streets. They’re angry about the city’s lack of adequate shelters and the laughable number of beds that are on “offer.”

They’re angry about the inadequate city, county and state services for the unhoused, who are inevitably blamed if they don’t make immediate use of the bureaucratic labyrinth of phone numbers. Residents are justifiably angry about the lack of care for nearly 10,000 fellow Sacramentans who have nowhere else to go.

A problem of cooperation

Data is, of course, never wholly unbiased, and the city has a vested interest in looking productive. But it’s simply not fair to lambaste the city; with a budget nearly seven times smaller than that of the county of Sacramento. The city has become the leader on an issue that should be a shared regional priority — but isn’t.

Sacramento’s Assistant City Manager Mario Lara gave a thorough report of the citywide response protocols, coordination with the county, the balance between services and compliance, and the city’s notorious shelter capacity constraints.

In the past few years, there have been multiple city ordinances: prohibiting camping on sidewalks, camping near schools, or on private property. The consistent enforcement of those ordinances is another question.

Lara said the highest number of police service calls regarding the homeless were in District 2 and District 4 -– Council members Sean Loloee and Katie Valenzuela’s districts, respectively — with approximately 13,000 calls for service so far this year. District 2 is in North Sacramento and includes neighborhoods such as Del Paso Heights, Woodlake and Robla. District 4 includes downtown, midtown and East Sacramento. Of those 13,000 calls, 2,300 were for blocked sidewalks, 189 for proximity to schools, 1,400 for camps blocking paths or trails and 6,500 labeled as “concern calls.”

The city reported its eight crews, working seven days a week, have removed more than 2,700 cubic yards of waste this year, and approximately 24,500 hypodermic needles.

In contrast, the county’s representative, Chevon Kothari, did not make a presentation at Tuesday’s meeting, despite the city’s direct request. The apparent miscommunication suggests a partnership still very much in progress and exemplifies the latest mishap in a long line of such between the two governments.

Notably, District 3 Councilmember Karina Talamantes said she had specifically requested that the city receive ”the same presentation that the county board supervisors got.”

“The city and the county can’t be on the same page (if we don’t have) the same information,” she said.

Kothari punted to Tim Lutz, the county’s director of health services, whose shoestring report revealed that, somehow, the county is getting away with doing even less than the city despite the larger county budget. Neither county representative could directly answer questions about services or programs from council members Talamantes, Lisa Kaplan or Valenzuela.

“(The city and county) are not in dispute, we are working well together; this is all in the spirit of constructive partnership,” said Steinberg, in a transparent attempt to repair a still smoking bridge.

“We can have that honest conversation. We have it privately as partners, as friends — but we need to have it publicly,” Steinberg said. “(Councilmember) Talamantes, your questions will not be answered to satisfaction unless and until we have that conversation.”

But the city needn’t be in open dispute to make it obvious that the county is failing to hold up its end of the bargain. The homeless population living in unincorporated areas of the county is only second to the city, which has far fewer resources and shelter opportunities.

“What’s happening in urban Sacramento is also happening in the unincorporated areas as well,” Steinberg said. “More of those dollars and more of those (full-service partnerships) need to be for the people who are living in these encampments without making it so difficult to qualify for an FSP or to or take too much time and bureaucracy to actually get people started with the help and treatment they need.”

Perhaps most disturbingly, for every one Sacramentan exiting homelessness, there are three others entering. Right now, the city is spending $36 million per year on approximately 1,100 shelter beds — or more than $32,000 per bed.

“It’s not as if there are beds available, these beds are full,” Lisa Bates, CEO of Sacramento Steps Forward, told the council during her presentation. “

An answer of compromise

On the same day as the council meeting, the new state budget was being hashed out just blocks away. Missing from it was the language that would have encouraged local collaboration and defined roles and responsibilities for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program.

Homelessness is not a city of Sacramento-only problem, nor is it a Sacramento County-only problem. It is a byproduct of the nation’s downturned economy, a deepening chasm of affordable housing opportunities, a mental health crisis and the non-stop funneling of city and county funds into law enforcement budgets over community response programs.

Neither Sacramento nor any California city can solve homelessness by itself. Tuesday’s meeting proved that this city in particular will continue to receive little cooperation from its county or state until either or both of those entities are forced to act.

In the meantime, Sacramento can do something to immediately help.

“You want more capacity?” Steinberg asked. “Then we need to come up with more sites.”

If Sacramento is serious about this, the mayor said, then “We’ve got two choices: We either lease more motels now and provide space for people or we allow Safe Ground.”

“Maybe it’s no longer an excuse to say ‘We can’t just get to that because we don’t have enough resources.’ Maybe we need to instruct the City manager to figure out a way,” Steinberg said.

“Unless and until we collectively come forward with more places to allow (temporary) tents and trailers, or we lease more motel rooms so we can bring more people indoors,” Steinberg said. “This is not magic here. We go round and round on this.”

But if just a few council members — and possibly an outgoing mayor with little to lose politically — would band together, the city might create eight new Safe Ground camping areas: One in every district, and thereby lessening the taxation on (or modern-day redlining of) any one part of the city.

Sacramento needs sites that are safe for both the homeless and the homeowners, immediately. Eight new safe zones for the homeless can act as pinpoints, where the city can focus its manpower and services, and each district sharing more of the load will take the strain off of any single one.

But in order for the plan to work, residents living in the city must accept that they will have to live with the homeless sheltering in nearby lots or other safe zones.

The tradeoff for relinquishing control of a few acres in each district would be the goal of regaining the use of sidewalks, parks, trails and other public places that have long been centers of contention.

What Sacramento has been doing has helped few, hurt far more — and amounts to little more than going “‘round and ‘round” again.