Sacramento’s ‘Solutions’ and $pending are Growing Homeless Population

In January 2018, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced he wanted to order 1,000 tiny homes to shelter the homeless.

In 2019, Sacramento officials announced a plan to open cabin-style shelters with services for 100 homeless people somewhere in North Sacramento.

“In summer 2020, he renewed the call for 500 tiny homes. There are about two dozen tiny homes sheltering homeless young people in North Sacramento, but the promise has largely not come to fruition,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

“Sacramento is home to more than 6,000 homeless, vagrants, and drug addicts living on the street,” the Globe reported in 2019. Today that number is more than 11,000 vagrants, and drug addicts living on the streets.

In 2015, the City published a report admitting to spending more than $13.6 million annually to address homelessness. “According to the 2015 Point-in-Time Homeless Count for Sacramento County, on any given night, approximately 2,650 people throughout Sacramento County experience homelessness. Over the course of a year, it is estimated that over 5,000 people will be homeless for one or more nights in Sacramento.”

It appears that the City of Sacramento is investing in growing the homeless population, rather than eradicating it.

In 2019, then-City Councilman Allen Warren, whose district the cabins would be located in, had proposed that the city build a development for 700 homeless and low-income people – a mixture of cabins, tiny homes, tents and traditional permanent housing. Warren had identified a vacant lot, the former site of the now closed Harmon Johnson Elementary School.

It was evident that Councilman Warren attempted to actually solve some of the problem with his idea for some sort of shelter for 700 homeless people. Instead, Mayor Darrell Steinberg chose to buy individual cabins from Seattle area-based Pallet, or from local builders, the Bee reported… for 100 homeless.

The City had been relocating some homeless to a North Sacramento shelter, the only city-run homeless shelter at the time, which the city then strangely closed. There were 37 people staying at the shelter at the time in 2019, which housed 200 at its peak.

At the time, Steinberg said city resources were needed to go into opening new shelters.

Flash forward to 2021: “The city plans to place new tiny homes at several North Sacramento sites and under the W-X freeway, part of the City Council’s $100 million Comprehensive Siting Plan to Address Homelessness, but it’s unclear when they will open,” the Sacramento Bee reported this week.

The trailers and tiny homes were “not appropriate” for emergency use during a storm, city spokesman Greg Fishman said. “The city opened two respite centers for the storm, including one at City Hall, and the county opened three.”

The Sacramento City Council unanimously adopted a plan in August to create “more than 5,000 beds, roofs and safe camping spaces to mount a comprehensive response to the growing crisis of homelessness.”

“The plan is the product of more than six months of intensive outreach and work by the Mayor’s Office, City Councilmembers and City staff. Now that Council has approved the list of sites and strategies, it will be the job of City staff to carry them out,” the City explains on its website.

As City Councilman Sean Loloee recently told the Globe, he questions the spending on homeless by the city, county and state. “The proposal of $14 billion in homeless spending (by the state) – how many can we really help with that?” Loloee asked. “Or the $100 million the Mayor proposes… how many homeless individuals will that help? What is the number?”

“And is $14 billion really the number? Or is it $30 billion… or $5 billion?” Loloee asked. “Where is the study which shows why that person became homeless? Progressives say it’s because of the lack of housing. But these people weren’t homeless 5 to 10 years ago. It’s bipolar and drug addiction.”

Loloee said it is likely that the money will go towards “affordable housing” rather than to services to help identify the specific issues causing their homelessness. However Loloee is profoundly concerned with what the city is spending on “affordable housing” at $600,000 per unit,” Loloee said. “One hundred units at $600,000 per unit is $60 million.”