Sacramento Mayor McCarty Kicks Homeless Out of City Hall

Last week, 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 out at City Hall all hours of the day and night.

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.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg followed the failed Obama-era “housing first” policy, rather than the successful “triage-first” policy of the San Antonio Haven for Hope. “Housing first” has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on motel renovations, tiny homes, renovated apartments, which has been a colossal waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Politicians knowingly chose this path, rather than diagnosis and mandatory treatment. It was a massive re-distribution of wealth to Democrats, leftist non-profits and NGOs.

Sacramento’s homeless street vagrants and nighttime zombies have been allowed to live under a separate set of laws. They are everywhere now – living out in the open on sidewalks in front of homes, living on every freeway offramp, openly living in city parks, under freeways, along frontage roads, behind golf courses, in parking lots, and every open crevice one can imagine. But they don’t live in former Mayor Steinberg’s own neighborhood.

The Sacramento Bee reported:

Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty’s plan to stop homeless people from sleeping outside City Hall drew criticism Tuesday afternoon from advocates, residents and council members,  His proposal, unveiled last week, seeks to prohibit people from sitting or lying down on the ground outside City Hall except in limited circumstances. This would amend a city policy made six years ago which has allowed people to sleep on the property overnight but not during the day.

McCarty has described the proposal as a “common sense” approach consistent with other policies and would allow the city to reallocate money to other homeless resources. While Tuesday’s City Council meeting only featured a procedural vote of the proposal, residents and council members raised concerns about the criminalization of homeless people and one less safe location to sleep.

The usual suspects showed up to the City Council meeting claiming concern for the homeless – likely those tied to Sacramento funding handouts, ostensibly charged with “helping” them.

Cleanup and “Rapid Response” teams cost the city (taxpayers) $353,000 per year to clean up after the homeless at City Hall, KCRA reports.

The Mayor says this is a safety issue. And indeed it is. And it always was.

Mayor McCarty’s proposed ordinance is good, and it is common sense, as he expressed. However, he also expressed interest in repurposing the $353,000 to “buy 30 tiny homes.” That’s $11,766 for each tiny home so a drug-addicted homeless vagrant who needs mental health treatment can trash it.

I can think of a few other local needs that funding can and should be repurposed for…

But kudos to the Mayor. It’s one small step for Sacramento.

This is what Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrat politicians built in California.