Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg Issues Feeble Statement on SCOTUS Ruling on Homeless Camp Bans

In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which found that local laws limiting encampments on public land does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, allowing for local civil and criminal penalties.

The SCOTUS ruling overturns the 2018 Martin v. Boise ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which barred cities from criminalizing homeless people on public property unless there is an available shelter bed for them.

For many cities and local politicians, they heaved a sigh of relief as this helps validate current city encampment ban laws.

But not Sacramento’s Mayor.

The city of Sacramento incorrectly interpreted the 9th Circuits’ Boise decision to mean it cannot clear camps on public land without offering shelter beds. The Bee claims Sacramento’s available shelter beds “are typically full,” which is contrary to what the Globe, and other media outlets have reported for several years – many shelter beds, converted hotel rooms, tiny houses and FEMA trailers were and still are unused.

Responding to the ruling, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to uphold the power of governments to impose civil punishment for camping outside would not change the city’s “balanced, compassionate approach” toward homeless people, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Mayor Steinberg’s “balanced, compassionate approach” toward homeless vagrants is to allow them to live in squalor on streets, cooking meth and shooting heroin, picking open sores and scabs, urinating and pooping in public, committing sex acts on sidewalks, suffering various mental illnesses, as well as allowing them to terrorize local businesses, families, kids, shoppers and commuters.

The Sacramento policy on homeless vagrants has been to allow the homeless drug-addicted, mentally-ill, criminal vagrant population to camp, squat and roam unrestrained in the Sacramento region. They disrupt daily business life in Sacramento’s downtown, as well as the residential neighborhoods in and around the city.

And city officials and the mayor have done little to prevent and stop this.

This daily harassment led Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho to file a lawsuit against the City of Sacramento in September 2023 for failing to abate the homeless crisis in the Capitol city. DA Ho said Sacramento’s homeless crisis has exploded by more than 250% in just 7 years.

DA Ho described the city as collapsing into chaos and said Sacramento’s homeless crisis has become an “erosion of every day life.”

The lawsuit said the city has created a public nuisance by allowing homeless camps to spread into residential neighborhoods, and for failing to clear sidewalks and areas around public buildings – including the Sacramento County Courthouse, where court employees, attorneys and visitors frequently were physically harassed, and some attacked trying to get into the building.

Following DA Ho’s lawsuit announcement, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg accused the District Attorney of  politicizing the homeless issue. DA Ho told the Globe that his lawsuit isn’t personal or political. “Public safety is my only concern,” Ho said. “I can’t raise taxes or assign housing to be built,” DA Ho said. And he reiterated that public safety is his purview as District Attorney.

Flash forward to the recent SCOTUS decision.

The Bee reported that Chione Flegal and Chris Martin, who run the advocacy organization Housing California, expressed frustration with the decision and claimed it will criminalize being homeless in the state.

Living/camping/squatting on city streets is illegal… doing illegal drugs on city streets is illegal… stealing from businesses and residences is illegal… that makes it a crime.

Legal and Martin go so far as referring to the homeless drug-addicted, mentally-ill, criminal vagrants as “our unhoused neighbors.” And that is perhaps one of the biggest misnomer  “homelessness” – these aren’t our neighbors who fell on hard times and are living out of a car.

Many of the homeless vagrants on the streets were released from prison early, thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “empty the prisons” program. Many are serious drug addicts who prior to Proposition 47 when facing drug charges, would have been given a choice by a judge to go to drug rehab or jail/prison. Most chose rehab. Prop. 47 destroyed the very successful drug court as it decriminalized many drug crimes.

Notably, District Attorney Ho supports the Grants Pass ruling. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case, DA Ho said:

“With the unprecedented increase of the unhoused population in Sacramento and our community at a breaking point, my office was the first prosecutor’s office in the country to file an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Grants Pass case and overturn Martin v. City of Boise.  I am grateful that today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review these poorly reasoned cases.  Our office will soon file an additional amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn both cases.”

With the SCOTUS ruling, Ho noted the “importance of finding compassionate and effective solutions that balance the needs of all residents,” he said in a statement. “The ‘Martin v. Boise’ experiment can no longer be used as an excuse to do nothing.”

Which leads right back to the Mayor of Sacramento who has been completely ineffective in dealing with Sacramento’s unprecedented homeless vagrant epidemic. He talks a lot, and spends a lot, which has only resulted in exponentially more homeless drug-addicted mentally-ill criminals living in and on Sacramento streets.