Did City of Sacramento Break Laws on Homeless Encampments?

Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho announced that his office is gathering evidence and assessing whether or not the city violated laws pertaining to the growing homeless encampments within the city.

Earlier this month, the Globe reported that DA Ho sent District 4 City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela a letter following Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman sending a letter to Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg outlining the growing unsafe conditions at the county courthouse because of so many homeless vagrants around the courthouse, and imploring the Mayor for help.

The County courthouse is in Valenzuela’s district.

Sacramento has provided all sorts of housing options under Mayor Steinberg’s “Housing First” plan, including travel trailers (RV quality) for Sacramento’s Homeless drug-addicted transients to live in, tiny homes, “safe” camping areas, and renovated motels, but the population has only grown.

In the heart of downtown where the courthouse is, even the metered parking places have been taken over by homeless camping attaching tents to the meters. Metered parking places are revenue for the city.

Sidewalks at the courthouse and around the entire Tsakopoulos Library are often wall-to-wall drug addled homeless vagrants, urinating, defecating, performing sex acts, wandering around in a drug haze, and “camping.”

DA Ho explained the seriousness of the homeless at the courthouse:

“In the past 12 months, my office documented 86 incidents in and around the District Attorney’s Office often involving unhoused individuals. For example: while walking back from court, a young deputy district attorney was accosted and struck in the head by an unhoused individual; while returning from a court run to file documents, a female D.A. employee received threats and hateful racial slurs from an unhoused man regarding the Hijab she wore; a fire was recently set in a nearby alleyway; a man exposed his genitalia across the street from the office; a rock was thrown through the window of the G Street Cafe; a man entered the lobby of the D.A.’s Office with a hammer; and encampments are growing in and near the area parking lots. These incidents do not include our daily exposure to feces, urine, broken furniture and trash littering the area. Some sidewalks are inaccessible as rows of tents and other items make walking impossible, thus forcing pedestrians into our busy streets. It is a sad state of affairs when citizens choose to step out into the street over the dangers lurking on our city sidewalks.”

Notably, DA Ho has explained numerous times publicly and told the Councilwoman that the Martin v. Boise case “does not suggest that unsheltered individuals are immunized from law enforcement in any capacity, nor does it allow for the City to ignore the problems in a way that creates a public nuisance.”

“As the representative of District 4, I respectfully request your immediate assistance to address critical public safety concerns surrounding the Gordon D. Schaber Courthouse by formally requesting the consistent enforcement of city code and ordinance violations,” DA Ho wrote. “Unfortunately, significant public safety concerns are affecting the public, District Attorney employees, jurors called to fulfill their civic duty, defendants appearing on their cases, and victims of crime seeking justice.”

Tuesday, DA Ho spent the hour talking about this with former Sacramento Sheriff and talk show host John McGinnis on KFBK. Ho said his office identified 16 different problematic homeless camps, and posted a survey on the DA’s website for residents to respond to issues with the homeless encampments, confrontations with homeless, and the like. On Tuesday he said they already had more than 1,000 responses.

Unsurprisingly, the Sacramento Bee editorial board has a big problem with District Attorney Ho, and apparently prefer that Sacramento’s homeless drug addicts be allowed to loiter, live and die on the city streets.

In an editorial titled, Sacramento’s DA dangerously politicizes homelessness at the worst possible time,” they accuse DA Ho of being on a “crusade,” “creating this cloud of suspicion over the city’s elected officials,” and imply he is not capable of addressing “a tenuous partnership between the city and county.”

They must feel this way because the city has done such a bang-up job of doubling the city’s homeless population, putting city residents in harms way with the unpredictable, violent drug addicts. They conclude DA Ho’s “crusade” is “a waste of time and an unfortunate distraction,” and say “if Ho wants to truly help, he could support Safe Ground, even near his neighborhood, as an important step toward improving overall public safety.”

“Even near his neighborhood…” what a cheap shot.

And then the Sacramento Bee editorial board tells DA Ho and the rest of the city’s residents to get used to living with the homeless: “The public needs to get comfortable with this step in managing homelessness.”

Nope.

DA Ho’s  Neighborhood Nuisance Abatement Questionnaire is available at sacda.org. He encourages anyone who lives in the city or has to work in the city to complete the questionnaire.