Homeless crises are nothing new in Sacramento. The first one happened in August 1850, when outrageous real estate prices caused people to camp on land that didn’t belong to them.
Everybody had guns in 1850. The guns went off when city officials tried to clear camps around Fourth and J streets and Tahoe Park. Five people died and six were wounded before things calmed down.
The next 176 years brought less violence but no permanent solutions. Labels changed. In 1850, people who slept outdoors were called squatters. Later they became bums, tramps, derelicts, vagrants and homeless. Now they are unsheltered. They still sleep rough.
Mayor Kevin McCarty is the latest leader to conjure a remedy for homelessness. His “Six Point Plan” builds on familiar strategies and borrows old ideas from previous City Hall administrations. He plows an ancient field.
McCarty’s six points involve people camping at a city-approved patch in the River District. Municipal blessing means campers have access to bathrooms, showers and outlets to charge their cellphones. Trash is collected on a routine basis.
The mayor has similar plans for people who live in vehicles—a city-certified parking lot with bathrooms and phone-charging stations. McCarty also wants to build little homes, 120 square feet each, and tighten the city’s grip on motel vouchers.
The lack of originality in McCarty’s plans may disappoint residents who hoped for relief from sidewalk campgrounds and junk piled around freeway underpasses.
Truth is, anyone who sleeps on city sidewalks these days has probably rejected shelter accommodations. Some campers prefer the freedom of the great outdoors.
The problem with the mayor’s plan isn’t superficiality or the fact that we’ve been there and done that. The problem is McCarty’s six points nibble around the edges of homelessness. His points offer no grand vision or long-term answer.
For a swing at grand vision, let’s salute state Sen. Angelique Ashby. The former City Council member wants to persuade her legislative colleagues to transform the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency into the county’s one-stop shop for everything involving homelessness.
It’s a fine idea. The city’s lack of administrative authority in health and human services is a massive roadblock. Ashby aims to bring the city in from the cold.
As things stand, counties run local mental health and welfare agencies. Sacramento County controls money and power to combat homelessness. The city is a bystander, outside looking in. This creates silos, turf battles, service confusions and loose accountabilities.
Jurisdictional authority wouldn’t matter to anyone but bureaucrats and politicians if unhoused people moved evenly around the county. They don’t. The vast majority of homeless people migrate inside city limits. The geographic distribution of homeless tents hasn’t changed since 1850.
Under Ashby’s plan, Senate Bill 802, the new Sacramento Area Housing and Homelessness Agency would handle “developing and preserving affordable housing and coordinating and administering homelessness prevention and response services” for the whole county, cities included.
Such language stirs the egos of county officials. It means they lose power. Show me a county official who’s OK with relinquishing power and I’ll show you a retiree.
It’s worth noting Mayor Kevin Johnson tried the same move in 2009, without the legislative punch. I was Johnson’s special assistant. Our office cooked up plans for a regional homeless authority called Sacramento Steps Forward.
The county was all in, until it wasn’t. When county officials realized their control over millions of dollars for health and human services would shift to Sac Steps Forward, Sac County stepped backward.
County officials stopped answering Johnson’s phone calls. Today Sac Steps Forward is a nonprofit that collects data on homelessness.
“Sacramento cannot wait another 20 plus years to see our region’s elected officials come together to make real progress on homelessness,” Ashby tells me.
She’s right, just late by 176 years.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
