City Beat

I don’t want to shock anyone, but the new year brings the chance that City Hall will stumble into a way to control and even reduce homelessness. This revelation follows the embrace of a tool other cities have deployed for years.
It’s called a Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS. The idea is obvious: coordinate services, outcomes and data involving homeless people. That’s about it.

There’s nothing new about coordinating housing and mental health services for people who live on the streets or in shelters. Integrated management systems have been around for years. Semi-annual homeless counts are one example of coordination.

Holiday season makes me think about my friend Randy Paragary. Randy, who died from pancreatic cancer in August 2021, loved the holidays. He decked out his restaurants in classy Christmas motifs and smiled as reservations filled up with parties.

Sometimes holiday celebrations took over every seat, with one exception. Randy always saved a table for our weekly lunch. That lunch is what I miss most.

Our lunch was more than two friends getting together for drinks and food. It was an event that grew into something like a local institution.

It sounds virtuous. Take 40 percent of the cash Sacramento collects on cannabis sales taxes and give the money to youth programs. Activities for kids would receive about $10 million a year.

But that’s not how Measure L on the city’s November ballot really works. Millions of tax dollars won’t go straight to support young people.

The cash will be laundered through a middleman: the youth services industry.

Yes, greedy adults stand at the heart of the comically titled “Children and Youth Health and Safety Act.” The proposal establishes a permanent transfer of city money to a special interest group.

It’s a cash geyser for the youth services industry.

In a sure sign the homeless disaster has moved from tragedy to farce, Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the City Council want to fix the mess with political games.

This is the story of Measure O on the November ballot. Known as the “Emergency Shelter and Enforcement Act,” it has no connection with emergencies or enforcement. Even the word “act” is a lie.

If, for some reason, voters approve Measure O, nothing will happen. Or maybe something might, one day. But that’s up to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.

The act is a mirage, suspended unless the county rescues the city from the homeless abyss. Which is no way to run a city.

Soon after she was elected to City Council in 2020, Katie Valenzuela told me something remarkable. She said she would follow her instincts and didn’t care if voters tossed her out after one term.

Now she might not make it that far.

In September, the group “For a Better Sacramento” plans to submit petitions forcing Valenzuela into a recall election next March.