Sacramento homeless camp under "Downtown" sign. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Sacramento City Council Votes Homeless Out of City Hall… and Back to the Streets
Downtown businesses have been begging the city for help for years in dealing with the growing homeless problem
By Katy Grimes, July 31, 2025 3:30 am
Earlier this month, Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty announced a new policy to prohibit homeless people from sleeping outside City Hall overnight. His policy would overturn former Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s original ordinance allowing homeless vagrants to sleep on City Hall grounds overnight. That turned into homeless vagrants hanging around City Hall all hours of the day and night, on city streets and in the park across the street.
McCarty’s predecessor, Mayor Steinberg apparently didn’t mind stepping over bodies and feces to get to work, as he allowed homeless to camp in front of City Hall. And he put City Hall employees and city residents in harms way.
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday voted to approve a new ordinance to prohibit homeless drug addicts from sleeping outside of City Hall between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Mayor McCarty complained that cleaning up after the homeless drug addicts cost (taxpayers) around $355,000 per year.
That’s a lot of power-washing.
But the problem is this new ordinance has no solution for dealing with the homeless drug addicts – it will merely push them out to other streets, businesses, parks and even nearby homes.
Rules for thee… The downtown businesses have been begging the city for help for years in dealing with the growing homeless problem.
Sacramento has a terrible homeless problem largely because the former Mayor Darrell Steinberg never dealt with the growing mentally-ill, drug addicted vagrant population, while counting the million$ in homeless funding coming in. It was cruel to allow drug-addicted and mentally-ill people to live, and die, on Sacramento streets, while lining the city’s coffers with money meant for dealing with and helping them.
Ironically or out of self-interest, Steinberg created a non-profit for mental health in 2015 before he termed-out of the California Legislature.
“California sets the standards for the nation in prevention, treatment and recovery; where all people receive quality care and support when, where, and for as long as they need it,” his website says.
The Steinberg Institute claims as its mission:
“Transforming California’s mental health and substance use care systems through education, advocacy, accountability, and inspired leadership.
We are an independent, nonprofit public policy institute dedicated to advancing sound public policy and inspiring leadership on issues of mental health and substance use.”
As Mayor, rather than address the root causes of the explosion of drug addicted vagrants living on city streets, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg made permanent housing for the city’s homeless his focus. While to some housing sounded reasonable, but Steinberg authorized the renovation of an old downtown SRO hotel to provide 250 square foot apartments that cost more than $445,000 per unit.
He authorized building tiny homes and studio apartments, provided RV trailers, renovated hotels and motels, and gave over parks and parking lots to homeless.
His Steinberg Institute shifted focus to policy, research, and advocacy. Lobbying.
In 2023, the Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Foundation, a supporter of Steinberg’s Institute, posted this about the Steinberg Institute:
In 2023 we announced Vision 2030, our framework for the state of California to tackle some of our toughest challenges. Vision 2030 lays out ambitious goals to reduce homelessness, hospitalization and incarceration for people with behavioral health conditions and build a behavioral health workforce that meets the diverse needs of the state.
The Steinberg Institute legislative packages appear to be devoid of actual help for the mentally-ill homeless drug addicts.
The closest legislation I could find for mentally-ill homeless vagrants is the 2023 Steinberg-sponsored Homelessness Accountability and Results Act, AB 799, which “requires the State to take a more direct leadership role in working with local jurisdictions collaboratively to set homeless reduction targets.” It was made a 2-year bill.
The 2022 “Mental Health Services Act was designed to foster innovation in county behavioral health departments to ensure Californians with severe mental illness receive the care they need.” The bill died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Most of the Steinberg-sponsored legislation is for the mental-health industry and not those in need of mental-health care.
You can see Sacramento’s conundrum.
However, it appears the current Sacramento Mayor isn’t far behind the former mayor. Mayor
Councilwoman Mai Vang opposed Mayor McCarty’s ordinance, and complained to KCRA 3, “This policy does not build housing. This policy does not treat the health of our neighbors. This policy does not address the root causes of the crisis on our streets.”
She’s right about the policy not addressing what is causing homelessness, but it’s not a lack of housing. These people desperately need mental health treatment, and drug addiction treatment. Mandatory treatment.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order late last week to mandate hospitalization for homeless people suffering mental illness and addiction.
“The Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats,” Trump stated in his order. “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.”
As I’ve reported for many years, don’t blame the homeless population in California on former Governor Ronald Reagan – he did not choose to close the state’s mental hospitals as the leftist media has incorrectly repeated for 50+ years – he was ordered to.
It was President John F. Kennedy who in his October 31, 1963 legislation –The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 — ordered the building of 1,500 mental health centers, while closing many mental health hospitals over time, known as deinstitutionalization. Governors were just required to execute on the President’s Order, while at the same time, Congress failed to fund the mental health centers. This was three weeks before Kennedy’s assassination.
“Only half of the proposed centers were ever built; none were fully funded, and the act didn’t provide money to operate them long-term. Some states saw an opportunity to close expensive state hospitals without spending some of the money on community-based care,” the Seattle Times reported in 2013 on the 50th anniversary of the Community Mental Health Act. “Deinstitutionalization accelerated after the adoption of Medicaid in 1965. During the Reagan administration, the remaining funding for the act was converted into a mental-health block grant for states.”
The explosion of California’s drug-addicted and mentally-ill homeless can be directly linked to Democrats’ determination to empty out the jails and prisons through legislation and ballot initiatives, claiming to be for safe neighborhoods and the well-being of our children. Combine that with the outrageous housing prices and high rents, and California is ground zero.
And Sacramento is worse, with more homeless per capita than Los Angeles or San Francisco.
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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November 28, 2018 -
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And that’s our state capitol…another way “California is leading the way!”
The whole political system in our state is in gridlock, beholden to donor money, union control, NGO’s and corruption. Every “debate” around homelessness, the bullet train, budget shortfalls, law enforcement, immigration, fire prevention, and the insurance crisis falls into this same bucket of corruption. The result is that nothing ever changes, except for the worst.
Only the politicians and their various cronies and beneficiaries think this situation and the destructive and prohibitively expensive “Housing First” (& etc.) approach to it is a good one. (And oh yeah, I forgot about the “mental health treatment” jobs program these disgusting Dem “leaders” —- all over the state —- have embraced.) Doesn’t matter that businesses and residents have been screaming bloody murder for years and years for cleanup, treatment, their businesses back, their streets back, their parks back, a safe environment where some govt-created lunatic fresh off a meth session doesn’t come after them with a machete out of nowhere while they are walking their dog.
The Usual Suspects don’t give a crap, chaos only serves them. That’s what they think, believe it or not. How do we know they think that? Because instead of working to reverse what is dangerous and completely unacceptable, ask anyone, they have continually sought with a laser-like focus to make the situation worse and too big to fail. There is money in it, there are votes in it — both through “buying” votes and registering vagrants to vote —- there are armies of trouble-makers in it to show up and do WHATEVER, if needed, to show the public who’s boss. What do they care if the state and the infrastructure and services paid for by taxpayers increasingly make a steady descent into a living hell of a crime-ridden, corrupt, stinking, slime pit of human wreckage and filth for all?
Meanwhile the sensible people, average voters and taxpaying citizens, want improvements, want drug-added mentally vagrants treated and cared for, want to use the streets and parks and cities, want the freedom of basic safety. We want that. They don’t.
Thus who is more mentally ill: The mayor and former mayor of Sacramento and the rest of the money-grubbing local and statewide electeds and unelecteds who benefit and don’t give a rip about HOW they benefit, or a crack-addled vagrant on the street energetically coming after you with a huge rusty knife? How about we build some tiny houses with padlocks for THEM and throw away the keys?
But what did we expect when it seems the only thing our CA “leaders” are able to do properly and with gusto is fine-tune the cheating and rigging of our elections? As Newsom is working on as we speak? How else could these Dem-Marxist bottom-feeders and losers ever get elected to office?
Yes, Showadtell. You are absolutely correct. Beyond the only obvious solution, that being separating the addicts from the drugs, there is another necessary action. A grand jury should be convened to look into how government funds (e.g.., our tax dollars) are distributed to NGO’s whose ostensible reason for existence is to “cure” homelessness. I believe such an investigation would disclose billions of dollars of graft and corruption. How much money was received? How was the money spent? What are the salaries of the NGO administrators and staff? What are the personal relationships between NGO administrators and elected officials. The grand jury should demand all correspondence between the parties involved. The whole dynamic is fraud on an epic scale and it all is based on the never-ending continuation and expansion of drug addiction. It’s sick to the core.
You’re right, Fed Up. The “Homeless Industrial Complex” is REAL. And has been going on for a long, LONG time. But it’s looking like the hammer that cracks all of this open, as you’ve described, could be on its way. We’ll see, fingers crossed.
“The Homeless Industrial Complex” – Edward Ring, California Globe, May 28, 2019
https://californiaglobe.com/fr/the-homeless-industrial-complex/
By the way, here is an example of Worst Governor Ever Gavin Newsom’s continued effort to rig CA elections, as mentioned above:
“Blue State Blues: Gavin Newsom’s Gerrymandering is an Insult to Fire Victims”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/08/01/blue-state-blues-gavin-newsoms-gerrymandering-is-an-insult-to-fire-victims/
Remains to be seen whether or not he will get away with it. What a jerk.
This new ordinance by Sacramento’s Democrat Mayor Kevin McCarty and the Democrats on Sacramento’s City Council has done nothing to solve Sacramento’s pervasive homeless problem and it just pushes them out to the surrounding areas during those hours. Drug addicted and mentally ill homeless and vagrants are everywhere in the Sacramento region including in surrounding communities like Elk Grove, Antelope, Citrus Heights and Roseville where it used to be rare to see them. It wasn’t like this when my parents and grandparents were growing up here.
Yesterday afternoon I saw a young White man in his early 20’s passed out on the sidewalk in front of the recently built Starbucks on the corner of Fruitridge Road and Stockton Boulevard. Early this morning there was a young Black woman (or trans) dressed provocatively in a skin tight black outfit wearing sequined high heels who was passed out against the wall between Planet Fitness and the Smart & Final store on Stockton Boulevard. Sadly this is a common sight an I’ve called 311 to report these situations numerous times.
The explosion of California’s drug-addicted and mentally-ill homeless can probably be linked to to Newsom and Democrats emptying out the jails and prisons along with the lack of effective drug and mental health treatment centers. It’s also probably linked to Democrats and their taxpayer funded welfare and giveaway programs which has turned the state into a ghettoized mecca for the homeless, vagrants and irresponsible moochers from around the country and the world. Why wouldn’t they come and stay here when they’re promised taxpayer funded benefits like housing, transit passes, food, medical care, education and now even pet care in Democrat controlled cities like Sacramento.
And around and around and around we go on the Municipal Merry-Go-Round from Hell.
Thanks for the colorful first-hand vagrant report, Samantha.
I could go on and on about the daily encounters with the hordes of homeless and vagrants here in Sacramento. Katy Grimes is spot on pointing out that Sacramento is worse, with more homeless per capita than Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Samantha and Show – I take photos daily of the homeless drug addicts I encounter, just in case – in my neighborhood, around the Capitol, on downtown streets, at the grocery store, at every gas station, in Target, at Starbucks… they are everywhere.
Katy, without your many stark photos of how Sacramento has deteriorated over the years from the homeless-vagrancy horrors in every conceivable setting, there wouldn’t have BEEN any photos of it, especially at the time you started publishing them many years ago. Same of course for ALL of the many articles and stories on this disgrace.
It has been suggested here in the past by certain commenters I admire that groups of drug-addled and mentally ill homeless vagrants be transported and dropped off in front of the homes of certain politicians. Has the time finally come for that? With the vagrants’ consent, of course.
First time reader and to me it sounds like you are an idiot. To give a blanket statement or title to every single homeless person, calling them “The homeless drug addicts” is mighty small of you and whoever agrees with that title. I’m in these streets every single day. I hire a whole lot of people that are homeless in Sacramento. Do I get great reliable trustworthy people who are hard workers? Sometimes. However, I do get hungry and thirsty and dirty workers who don’t know how to get out of the hole the have ended up in. Do they all do drugs? alot of them do. But so do alot of non-homeless people. My point is it sounds like you have no idea who these people are and don’t care. Just as long as you don’t have to step over them and their drugs to get to work everyday. It’s ok to rub elbows and shake hands probably go to lunch with the “higher class” drug addicts. that’s a shame because there’s a lot of good people living on the sidewalks and under bushes in Sacramento who are overwhelmed with this situation of homelessness. We are all only a half step away from being homeless.
It is not surprising that you have completely missed the point. The political so-called “leadership” in Sacramento (and elsewhere) have had decades, and billions of dollars on top of that, to do something about this situation. THEY are the ones who are being criticized. Get it?
By the way, many who find themselves on the street or living in their cars ARE helped out of this situation (about 10%, it’s been shown) by the missions, usually. Those who succeed are highly motivated to get back on their feet and do so typically in a rather short period of time (3 to 6 months).
However, in response to the approx 90% of those on the street, living in their own filth, misery, addiction, and hopelessness, who need triage care and tough-love no-nonsense treatment, our conscience-less political “leadership” —- and their similarly misguided friends — have figured out that if they not only keep this %$#@show going but GROW it, they can rake in a LOT of money to fund the bad-guy nonprofits, their own re-elections, their own sponsored crooked election cheating, their fake theatrical “protests,” the next useless tax measure that promises to clean it all up after which they pocket the cash; whatever it is they can fund it with their ill-gotten lucre.
You do understand, don’t you, that the political “leadership’s” refusal to follow a model that works and which could be successfully applied to those on the street, raises a major red flag that the Homeless Industrial Complex is at work and that the “leaders” and their Friends are making out BIG TIME? You DO understand, don’t you, that because of the bogus “Housing First” and “Inside Safe” models, that stashing drug addicts into city-sponsored motel rooms and tiny houses and RVs means that out-of-sight and out-of-mind they are overdosing and dying in unconscionable numbers?
Are you willing to pressure the Democrat-Marxist politicians, that you likely voted for, to do the right thing for once and work toward getting these people the care they should have, which in many cases would save their lives and transform them and lift them out of the living hell they are now experiencing? Or are you (as I can’t help but suspect) someone who has a stake — a money stake or a job stake — in this nightmare?
Or who knows, maybe not, maybe you are just someone who is woefully uninformed about what is actually going on here.
Anyone who thinks the Communist Democrats are going to fix homeless situation is dreaming. The way to take over a society with Communism is to create poverty and strife. Communists create a society so awful that people are willing to give up the rights for promised relief, relief that never comes by the way. The Communist Democrats stopped enforcing drug laws for a reason, to create poverty through addiction. California used to enforce drug laws, and there were essentially no homeless.
Act 2 will be an energy crisis in California. The Communist Democrats have shut off oil production and refining in California. Our electric rates are already three times the national average.
Make no mistake, the Democratic Party is a neo-Communist party.