Sacramento homeless camp under "Downtown" sign. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Sacramento Mayor Calls City’s 11K Homeless ‘Guests’ as if They Were Invited
Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced the City is opening a temporary safe camping site ‘for people experiencing homelessness’
By Katy Grimes, February 2, 2022 11:03 am
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced Wednesday the City of Sacramento is opening a temporary safe camping site “for people experiencing homelessness” in a small section of the “Peninsula” parking lot at Miller Park.
“People experiencing homelessness.”
“Miller Park will be used as a transitional site for the 10 remaining guests at W/X, as well as a low-barrier site providing an entry point into the system for people currently living in nearby encampments,” the Mayor’s announcement says.
“Guests.”
Calling the city’s 11,000 squatting homeless “guests,” as if they were invited to live on Sacramento streets is offensive to nearly everyone, including the homeless who need help, not flowery language.
“The new 60-tent site will accommodate approximately 80 unhoused residents who remain in the Southside Park and central downtown areas.”
“Unhoused residents.”
There is no mention of the “guests'” physical, mental and spiritual conditions.
Sounding simpleminded, Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela weighed in:
“I’m excited to work with the Department of Community Response to begin welcoming guests to this site. Miller Park is uniquely suited to this task. We’re taking lessons learned from our experiences at WX and approaching this new site in a way that will function efficiently, safely, and provide mutual benefits to our unhoused neighbors and the surrounding community.”
“Unhoused neighbors.” None of my neighbors are living on Sacramento streets.
Miller Park is a city park, not a campground for “guest” “unhoused” vagrants high on meth and heroin.
As for the “lessons learned,” the Mayor and Councilwoman have learned nothing. They just keep repeating the same pointless moves – providing campgrounds on city streets and expensive, newly renovated motels and apartment “housing.” Never has meaningful, long-term help for the homeless been on the menu.
Last summer, Steinberg proposed to open homeless shelters, tiny homes and tent encampments in 20 residential neighborhoods and locations around the city. That did not go over well and was scrapped largely because council members did not run this ludicrous idea by their constituents first.
Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, the Globe reported.
Mayor Steinberg also weighed in obtusely:
Mayor Darrell Steinberg said the W/X safeground had “proved to be an effective bridge for transitioning many into shelter or permanent housing.”
“We can’t effectively help our unhoused residents or provide relief to our neighborhoods unless we have safe places for people to sleep and to get connected with the services they need,” Mayor Steinberg said. I’d like to thank Councilmember Valenzuela for standing up these crucial facilities in her district.”
Councilwoman Valenzuela’s “crucial facilities” were not hers to “stand up.” She does what she wants, despite objections from the residential neighborhoods surrounding these vile homeless campgrounds full of the city’s “guests.”
A compassionate and merciful Mayor and Councilwoman would never authorize broken human beings in dire need of help to live on the streets in disease-laden filth.
Their low-barrier shelters and campgrounds are just part of a callous mole game, which pop up every few months in different locations. “Low-barrier” means no rules or accountability for the homeless residing there: they openly buy and sell drugs, use the drugs, store stolen property from nearby neighborhoods, and vomit, defecate and urinate wherever and whenever they feel the need.
Recently, Mayor Steinberg announced the city was awarded another $23.9 million state Homekey grant to convert a downtown hotel into housing for homelessness vagrants. The City and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency plan to turn a Best Western hotel into a 92-unit homeless apartment complex with bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchenettes.
The Globe noted that $23.9 million is quadruple the annual budget of many effective local programs helping homeless men and women turn their lives around.
In effect, the city is in competition with known successful private programs actually changing lives. The chance for a pretty new apartment at no cost to a guy living in a tent on the sidewalk is a more attractive carrot than a cot in a dormitory and a program to help him get off meth and straighten his life out. Mayor Steinberg and Councilwoman Valenzuela know this, and if they don’t they need to be recalled because they aren’t qualified to hold elected office.
The real scam is calling the state’s homeless vagrant population “unhoused,” which has justified spending billions of taxpayer dollars on housing for the homeless in lovely new apartments, renovated hotels, and tiny homes.
“The City and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency will work with Danco Communities, the project developer, to turn the Best Western Sutter House at 1100 H Street into 92 units with bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchenettes,” the City says on its website. That’s $260,000 per unit.
Remember, the amount of this project is $23.9 million.
What could that $23.9 million grant do for the city’s 11,000 homeless walking the streets at night, and sleeping on them during the day?
Residential treatment.
But treatment doesn’t spread the money around to favored contributors the way an expensive, multi-million dollar renovation or development project does.
“The site is projected to open in early February and will provide new tents, as well as access to restrooms, showers, garbage collection, and 24/7 staff to connect people to health services and programs to help them secure long-term housing,” the City says.
Tuesday Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $45 million grant for two new Homekey projects in Los Angeles and Sacramento which will provide 170 units of housing for people exiting homelessness. That’s $264,706 per unit.
The “people experiencing homelessness,” and the “guests” of tent cities are inhumanely being used and abused by these politicians. “Long-term housing” is not nearly as necessary as drug addiction treatment and mental health treatment is. Not one of these “guests” will be able to maintain this newly renovated long-term housing until they are forced into treatment and show signs of recovery.
Until then, this is all a very expensive façade, as well as a failed experiment using broken human beings as guinea pigs. And it is evil and cruel.
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Unless drug tests are required for living in the housing units, they will quickly become worthless slums. But as long as the money is spread around, that is of no concern. This seems akin to the high speed rail, where taxpayer money was distributed among the donors of the politicians.
They ought to convert the old Arco Arena into a giant treatment center for rehab and mental health. An indoor shelter and campground in the parking lot for those committed to treatment.
Plenty of room there for 11,000 people!
I don’t mean to be rude, but the drug addicts, many of whom have become mentally ill due to their addictions, don’t want to go to rehab. It would be a better idea to turn the Arco Arena into a giant JAIL and then make sure they can’t smuggle drugs in and out.
You say you do not mean to be rude. I’m sorry, but you get a failing grade on that.
In trying not to be rude, you also seem to have manned the gate at a homeless shelter.
It would appear as if you know everything that goes along with homelessness. Not all are hopeless drug addicts, some are just people that have been through exceptionally bad times and cannot get out of it. And it is typical that all the comments, and this piece of excrement report, fail to mention alcohol abuse. Is it because the authors have alcohol issues themselves?
You cannot force people who have addictions into rehab or into shelters either. Nor do we want them on our easements and sidewalks where they have no toilet facilities and do their drugs in public. So what do you want to do with them? I support the idea of low barrier camp site shelters with toilets, water, access to services including detox and treatment, etc, and a measure of security. Then go to work building low cost homes and well run schools, and opportunities for those who can, to better themselves.
Battle of the Clown Mayors —Darrell Steinberg v. Yoga Pants Garcetti:
Sitting atop the beds in homeless/vagrant “transitional housing” near once-quaint-and-charming, now-trashed historical Olvera Street in Downtown L.A., as well as other L.A. transitional housing locations, “Welcome Home Baskets” from the city, filled with gifts, awaited the “guests.” This was on the heels of presenting huge gift baskets to released prisoners and “thanking them for their service.”
This was in 2016. I’d share the articles but I’m blocked without a subscription. Like I’m going to get a subscription for these L.A. rags. 🙂
By the way, this transitional housing is “wet,” meaning (as you know) that vagrants can blithely continue doing their drugs and alcohol and all the rest of it. Maybe even start SELLING drugs, stockpiling weapons, or God only knows what. Think it will magically get better, now that these very troubled people are nicely tucked away and can’t be seen? Uh, noooo… And I completely agree, “it is evil and cruel.”
Baffling move to me. There’s ample open land just downriver from the marina and along the south side of the ship channel where even a “wet” site would be harder for drug dealers to supply — and without the theft opportunities from all the moored boats. Looks like a much safer area than the marina — safer for the “homeless” and without immediately adjacent residential areas to plunder.
It just moves one community’s problem over into another section of town so that the people down there have to suffer. The drug addicts need to go to jail.
Drive-by flame throwing could become an interesting sport. Anyone have any good, used flame throwing equipment (frequently used in clearing land) that will shoot from a slow-moving car to a sidewalk tent?
Build a man a fire and keep him worm for a night. Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life!
Rather than “Guests,” how about calling it like it is and saying, “Drug Addicts.” The mentally ill among the homeless are there due to ingesting copious amounts of “mind altering substances.” These people actually belong in jail – they really do. And by keeping them on the streets, begging, stealing, and USING, they are going to wind up dead. The only chance a drug addict has is if the consequences are bad enough to make them want to quit. The ends are always the same: jails, institutions and death. Well, we’ve removed the first two, so now it is just DEATH. Not because they haven’t been given enough, but because you don’t enable, coddle, feed and burp a drug addict. It kills them.
Well, I have seen Governor Newsom several times on TV inviting all homeless and undocumented here to in his words, Experience the California dream.
Soon our state will look just like downtown Bombay, India minus the cows