Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg proudly announced “Sacramento’s historic Capitol Park Hotel reopens this week as St. Clare at Capitol Park, a permanent supportive housing complex for people experiencing homelessness.”
Calling the state’s homeless vagrant population “unhoused” has justified spending billions of taxpayer dollars on housing for the homeless in lovely new apartments, renovated hotels, and tiny homes.
The Globe first reported on this fishy project in 2019:
The city just closed a triage shelter for the vagrants living on the streets. Mayor Steinberg is pinning his hopes on the Capitol Park Hotel which was used for decades as housing for low-income disabled adults. The city is kicking them out, and renovating the hotel for $23 million. Steinberg says it will have 180 beds for homeless by August.
As one neighbor said in response to Steinberg’s press conference, “these are the drug addicts and mentally ill who refuse the city services. To call them ‘homeless’ is an insult to those that are truly down on their luck. They are ‘vagrants, ‘criminals,’ ‘druggies,’ and ‘junkies’ who have chosen this lifestyle.”
Truer words could not be spoken.
In 2019 Steinberg complained, “some neighborhoods are complaining about the homeless, and then say ‘Don’t put the shelters in our neighborhood.’” He singled out the neighborhood of Land Park, which is adjacent to downtown Sacramento just to the South. This is my neighborhood.
Steinberg spoke of the “homeless” without addressing their open lawlessness, drug dealing, theft, people masturbating in public, shooting up heroin in the open, soliciting drugs and prostitution in public, and defecating and urinating on streets in front of local businesses. It’s not a pretty picture. According to Mayor Steinberg, “it’s a housing crisis.”
The “housing crisis” and the “unhoused” are apparently worth a really large bounty per head to the City of Sacramento – they are the “facilitators” for the hotel and apartment renovations, bringing billions to the cities in California from the federal and state governments.
That “housing complex for people experiencing homelessness” ballooned up per unit cost by 2020 to $445,000 each. Mercy Housing began the project with a $34 million price to convert the Downtown Sacramento building’s 180 hotel rooms into 134 studio units of about 280 square feet each. The project grew to a $64 million project, that we know of at this point.
That’s $478,ooo per 280 square foot room – $1,707 per square foot. The average square foot cost of real estate right now in Sacramento is about $300 to $400 per square foot.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg has been pushing for permanent housing for the city’s homeless. While that may sound reasonable and even decent, the latest project to provide tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel will cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space.
But wait!
In 2020, we reported, “Redevelopment of the hotel is now budgeted at $59.6 million, (up from $23 million in 2019) and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2022 (not August 2019).”
It was finalized in 2024.
The City of Sacramento says it contributed $20.3 million. The rest was other taxpayer funds via Gov. Newsom’s state-funded Project Homekey.
It is 2024, and “guests” are just now moving in. We are taking bets on how quickly the apartments will be trashed by the “unhoused;” the opening bet is 2 months.
The Mayor and city officials kicked out the low-income disabled adults who paid rent, and moved in some “homeless” while the renovations were taking place.
The hotel used to house 180 paying residents.
The newly named St. Clare has 134 remodeled studio apartments. How fortunate for the ‘vagrants, ‘criminals,’ ‘druggies,’ and ‘junkies’ who have chosen this lifestyle. Each apartment has a bathroom and kitchenette.
The first group of 80 residents will start moving in this week. The final 54 residents are delayed due to supply chain problems, according to the city.
And if you are still not sure that this is a racket, “Sixty-five of the units in the St. Clare were funded by the Mental Health Services Act, the so-called “millionaire’s tax” authored by Mayor Darrell Steinberg when he served in the Legislature,” the city says. “These units will be reserved for people experiencing homelessness and living with a serious mental illness. Residents will receive behavioral health services from Sacramento County.”
San Antonio’s Haven For Hope Transformational Campus and Courtyard, perhaps the model program in the country, had a $28.5 million annual budget in 2022. Their 2021 budget was $36 million. And they do this annually for less than what Mayor Steinberg spends on remodeling hotels and 134 apartments.
Haven for Hope coordinates and delivers an efficient system of care for the homeless in San Antonio, Texas. They have been a nationwide model for effectiveness. At the 22-acre campus, they serve more than 1,700 people daily in-residence on the campus, and another 700 in a low-barrier emergency shelter.
Haven For Hope does not provide renovated hotel rooms or tiny apartments for its homeless population. “Haven for Hope and our partners, address the root causes of homelessness by offering programming tailored to the specific needs of the individual. Our approach is person-centered, trauma-informed and recovery-oriented. The goal is to meet individuals where they are and support them as they move toward self-sufficiency.”
Despite spending millions on futile “solutions” like tiny homes, FEMA trailers, and renovated hotel rooms for the city’s growing homeless population, Sacramento’s 11,000+ transients are not receiving the treatments offered at Haven for Hope.
Nor are they receiving the residential care offered at 9-month program at the Union Gospel Mission Sacramento, which the Globe reported on. “We feed 8,500 to 9,000 meals a month to the homeless, and even continued during COVID lockdowns,” Pastor Tim Lane told the Globe. Union Gospel Mission offers a Bible-based Twelve Step Course and Heart of Addiction program, and Anger Management Course, Weekly Counseling with their Chaplains, Assigned duties to serve the homeless community and Aftercare with attaining jobs, schooling, finances, reconciliations, transportation, and housing.
And they do this annually for about one-fifth of the cost of Mayor Steinberg’s one-time hotel renovation.
View Comments (44)
1: Follow the money.
2: It's not what you know but who you know.
3. Paying off political debts with public money?
You say "fishy" I say: stinks to high heaven!
Thank you for exposing the tip of this corrupt iceberg.
I hope you and your staff can find the time to dig deeper with names and bank accounts.
Sad and despicable 180 people were kicked out of their homes for this. Shellenberger had a much better and significantly cheaper plan for the drug addicts, mentally ill that benefited from these $478K apartments. Where did the 180 residents kicked out endup?
The Governors mansion and Capitol building are big enough to house 100's of homeless. And since they are so concerned it would be an ideal solution!
$400,000+ housing for homeless persons. No bills in sight... sign me up I'm homeless! Catering is the issue! ...Feeding the wild dog!..Creating more issues to solve. Like a Pyromaniac Fire Man. It's amazing to me that the general population will put up with such nonsense from a single individual, no mater their Hiarchy position. Fire the mayor and anybody who has associated with his fraud. Make an example
of all the lies and theft. Take away their titles, their retirement, their investments their stock holdings and all assets if they stray from their HIRED positions! Let these individuals never take position in state, government or local deligations again! Make them personally pay back their DEBTS TO SOCIETY! Too many are able to step away from the chaos they have created with their pockets full and their Buisness Entities to take the blame "Legaly". Make more an example of these people. Lead the rest of the states by example and Justice for the citizens of the state California. This is an issue in All States!!! NO MORE FRAUD!!!
That $1707 figure that you quote is for a renovated structure. I wonder how it compares to a new construction cost. Also, if you inspect the renovated facilities, they aren't installing high end materials in the renovated areas. What these projects really are is prevailing wage projects that fund union coffers, enrich developers, provide developer fees to local governments and lastly kickbacks to politicians. Quite a racket. Keep pushing them you are getting under their thin skin.
The author included the cost in which you're inquiring about. The 9th paragraph (or broken section of sentences) down she mentions that current pricing for new construction runs about $300-$400 per square ft. About 83% less than the $1707 sq/ft purported cost for the renovations. On what planet and which country, of what state and in which city would 280sq ft cost more to renovate than it would cost to buy a new 3bed 3 bath home,like the ones selling in my hometown of Elk Grove? Oh yeah, that would be earth, The United States of America, California , and the Capital City named Sacramento. $470,000 per room? Where is all of that money going?
Another money laundering scheme in CA just like the bullet train. With Newsom in office it will Never end
Exactly! Greasy does it again. Vote these losers out.
Even in California I would bet that $478K could buy a person a decent single family home in a decent location somewhere. Might buy two or more of them out-of-state! And how obscene is it to kick out low-income disabled paying residents from a HISTORIC hotel (what happened to the government fetish for THAT, by the way?) to fix it up for and move in mentally ill and drug-addled, possibly criminal, vagrants? P.S. Please put me down for “trashed-in-two-weeks ” in the Globe betting pool if it hasn’t been snapped up already.
At this point in life I think I might even welcome the opportunity to live simply in one of those tidy (for now) apartments rehabbed for the vagrants and all prettily tied up in red satin ribbon. As long as I am not surrounded by the above-mentioned vagrant addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill, etc., who, by the way, were thus afflicted BEFORE they ended up on the streets and whose population also overlaps the violent and sex offending criminal population, as Katy Grimes described. But to listen to our own L.A. Mayor Karen Bass this week, the drug, alcohol, and mental problems didn't even begin until the previously upstanding hard-working citizens found themselves pitching a tent on the boulevard out of economic necessity. At which point they became so depressed they started shooting heroin. In public. And masturbating. In public. And assaulting passersby. Etc. Oh sure. Right. Tell me another!
Thank you Katy Grimes for spelling out the latest Sacramento idiot rulers’ chutzpah and for crunching the money numbers so that ---- once again ---- there can be NO DOUBT what a scam and a racket and a $$moneymaker$$ this thousandth example of the Homeless Industrial Complex is for certain mayors and their non-profit and phony homeless advocate and developer buddies. By the way, it sure sounds like there should be lots of cash left over, don't you think? Where is it? Being spent ---- as we speak ---- to remove the last honest and decent Republican from office in California? To pay off election cheaters for 2024? And more?
Elk Grove is selling single family, single floor plan homes at that price. It's not even hard to find in the area of Capital City. These homes I speak of are right down the road from my subdivision. They could have bought each person a new home as opposed to renovating a hotel. That is if unless of course, a few people werent embezzling the bajesus out of the funds.
Interesting. Thanks for posting this.
Katy Grimes and California Globe deserve praise for exposing the outrageous costs incurred using taxpayer funds to convert an old hotel into tiny apartments for the "unhoused." No doubt the Sacramento Bee and the rest of the local Democrat controlled propaganda media did not report the actual costs or that Mayor Steinberg and city officials had kicked out 180 low-income disabled adults who paid rent and instead moved in some “unhoused” into the 134 tiny apartments who pay no rent? As Katy mentioned, it appears that the “unhoused” are worth a really large bounty per head bringing in billions to California cities like Sacramento from the federal and state government.
Obnoxiously hypocritical Democrat Mayor Steinberg complained that some Sacramento neighborhoods had complained that they didn't want any homeless shelters, but we all know that there are no homeless shelters in his ritzy pocket area neighborhood. Any future homeless shelter needs to be placed in his neighborhood--preferably right next door to his house!
After evicting low income disabled persons, maybe Mayor Steinberg and the Democrats who control Sacramento plan to house illegals and migrants in those overpriced tiny apartments paid for by taxpayers? It's being done elsewhere. For example, Maine’s taxpayers are footing the bill for new apartments built in the city of Brunswick specifically for newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens who will have at least two years’ worth of rent paid for by taxpayers. The state budgeted nearly $3.5 million to provide 60 migrant families from Somalia and the Congo with two years of rent. The U.N. and WEF globalist's population replacement scheme is being implemented by Democrats with no opposition from RINOs.
(https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/11/maine-builds-new-rent-free-apartments-for-migrants-paid-by-states-taxpayers/)
Small minded, ignorant, and ridiculously loyal fans of the pretentious political party paradigm want to believe it's all the other party's fault for the mess of everything that were facing. When in all reality, having the two party's should be its own check and balance to make sure one isn't usurping the power and country from the people. The fact that there has been zero of that shows that it's a two party problem and both are to blame. Both are treasonous, tyrannical, and completely terrible at what they're doing. They have the wrong party's identified when they label the us vs them fight card. It's not Republican vs democrat....no the us vs them is the government at large vs the people. Citizens need to get this fact straight, and quickly .
James seems to be ignorant of party politics in Sacramento. The mayor and all the City Council members are Democrats. There is only one party that controls Sacramento and that is the Democrat party.
I'm confused, so you DO want them still outside where you have to see them constantly in their suffering? Until they die from exposure or get some kind of housing, they're still going to be out there. Since they don't just disappear when you try to ignore them or the issues that landed them outside, what do y'all suggest? Because obviously ignoring nor complaining is working. And the #s just keep rising the longer nothing gets done about it. So what's the plan?
How about YOU taking in some of them into your residence instead of complaining here and ignoring them? No doubt your Democrat masters will at some point demand that you not only take in the homeless but also newly arrived illegal migrants as well?
TJ - Sounds like commenter Mr. Complaining has a big stake in the growth of the Homeless Industrial Complex. I wonder if he --- or she --- would mind sharing with readers exactly what that stake is?
To repeat the obvious for the millionth time, we want our elected officials --- Gov, city mayors, legislators, etc. ---- to DO THE JOBS for which they already receive obscene $$salaries$$ even before the further enrichment of cash that enters their pockets from the gushing water faucet of taxpayer money that as we've seen does NOTHING but produce more slush funds and more drug-addled and often criminal vagrants living on the streets in their own filth and fever dreams: Encourage and write sensible laws, ENFORCE them, and ENFORCE the laws already on the books.
NO ONE is helped by the eternally expanding outrage on our city streets brought to us by our useless Dem/Marxists politicians: Not the drug-addicted, alcoholic, mentally ill vagrant nor the tax-paying citizen increasingly afraid to venture from their homes for any reason, including fulfilling their own jobs and responsibilities, and move freely and safely around their neighborhood and city streets.
DUH!
I call bullshit on Tiredof Yurcmplaining. The vast majority of your houseless/homeless/whatever are serial drug addicts. They are not employable and they will not spend their time in the obscenely overpriced taxpayer subsidized bungalows because they get their drugs on the street. Those that do spend some time in the bungalows will turn them into dilapidated flop houses because that's what drug addicts do. And I call bullshit on Mayor Steinberg. It's not a housing shortage. It's a drug and addict crisis of your making.
The plan should not to be to perpetuate actions which clearly show no progress. The plan should be to evaluate those who are in need of help, affinitize them into the categories they fall into which made them homeless (lost a job, health care costs, drugs, mental health issues) and address those specifically. The homelessness industrial complex is real and needs tough solutions. But nobody in the complex wants to solve it or they’d lose their livelihood. Government doesn’t want to solve it because it requires making tough decisions. Why do that when they can kick the can down the road while they term out and claim actions which, while not effective, were at least something they did? This all reeks of stupidity and apathy. This is a crying shame as the hardworking, taxpaying people continue to struggle so morons in government can perpetuate it all. Time to take back the government from those that have it.
Are you serious? The plan? Did you just fall off the turnip truck or what? With that you actually prove just how empty headed a certain group of people are here in CA. Like WTF? What is it going to take? You need some smart pills? Are you one of those "opposite" people who think everything good is bad and everything bad is good with absolutely no common sense or wisdom at all? You think you are going to gaslight God himself. Oh, thats right, you probably don't "believe" in God. RIGHT! We're all just here enjoying our lovely chaos on this round ball in space that a 36 year old scientist is somehow maintaining for us with a rubberband and a paper clip. Sounds good. Let's just keep going until the next flood. Wwwwrreeeeee!
I DO have a possible answer. The susanville prison is shut down and has plenty of room, food and medical facilities and plenty of room for staff. It’s already built and paid for
@Let's fix this - I saw and agree with your thought of using the vacate prison for housing. I'm taking a wild guess that the scammers don't want something like that. (1) It would be an easy fix, but they will probably grab more Federal dollars in the grifting way they are doing it now. (2) They want to locate their clients reasonably close in to downtown centers or business areas. I'm guessing
that the activists, legal chasers, politicians would want the people not to be far from distant from "civilization". (3)The people would probably complain that they "feel" like prisoners. Maybe with all my blatherings, I flat wrong, but I would be willing to bet that the grifters already discussed the prison and immediately shelved the thought.
IDK..it's a mess. I feel for these people. Living out doors. Especially the ones that lost there homes because of the high cost of living, these are tax payers too .and yet there taxes are putting a roof over the heads, of the homeless while their losing their homes and becoming homeless..
Tiredof Yurcomplaining, Government solutions will not solve the problem and I think that you know it. You can't name one government program that has been instituted in the last 40 years that has actually lessened the problem that it was originally created to solve. Government solutions are actually oxymorons. Let's step back a bit to when homelessness wasn't rampant, and the streets were clean. Crime was properly addressed; children were educated with knowledge that actually applied to what business actually needed and there were values that built families. In simple terms people were taught respect for oneself and others and people had hope. There is a generation that you are trying to house that has no respect or hope. A "tiny house" or a crummy room in a renovated hotel does not solve the root cause of the problems. What these folks need is to learn basic structure. 1. To know that if they break the law that it has negative consequences. 2. Reeducation after a person has been homeless for a few months it becomes a way of life, and they develop a sense of independence you might call it pride. 3. Homelessness needs to be disincentivized government programs that have been developed to enable homelessness need to be eliminated (poverty has been around forever and will never be solved by the government. We have had a war on poverty since the 1960's and poverty has only got worse since the war was declared). Lastly, I would encourage you to invite a homeless person to lunch and talk to this person as a person. I did this once and the looks that I received for bringing this social outcast in was quite unnerving. I met a person living in a dumpster who was very intelligent and to quote him "couldn't keep multiple balls going at one time". The solutions are simple and are as old as time itself but are contrary to the "big" government programs that you want to build that will only further enslave folks. Your programs are cruel and inhumane.