By Crystal Sanchez and Anthony Prince
The California Homeless Union and its local affiliate, the Sacramento Homeless Union, strongly opposes Mayor Steinberg’s “Master Siting Plan to Address Homelessness.” The “plan” is a deceptive and dangerous con job designed to circumvent the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Martin v. Boise, enrich wealthy contractors, strengthen the hand of the “homeless industrial complex” in controlling the unhoused and set the stage for Steinberg’s attempt to force the homeless to surrender their state and federal constitutional rights through an “obligation to accept shelter” ordinance which he admitted is now being drafted by the City Attorney.
The mayor’s plan is a multi-million-dollar subsidy to the contractors, the homeless industrial complex and the City, itself, that will not end homelessness. Behind the Mayor’s plan is the false narrative that people become homeless through some personal failing. In fact, the leading cause of homelessness is the soaring cost of housing. Sacramento currently lacks 63,000 units of affordable housing as required under federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidelines and a recent report by local media showed that 60,000 people can no longer afford to live here.
Can Darrel Steinberg be trusted? In 2019 Steinberg called a triage center that cost $40,000 a month to operate “a model facility”: it was topped with razor wire, filled with overflowing porta-potties and its “residents” were denied the most basic rights to freedom of association, travel and speech.
In the midst of the hurricane-force storms in January, the homeless lined up at a locked shelter that Steinberg failed open. At least six homeless persons died that night. Steinberg went before the City Council and accepted personal responsibility and called upon voters to “hold me accountable at the ballot box” although he later fought tooth and nail to halt a recall campaign launched by the Homeless Union.
Some are embracing the “Master Plan” because, on paper, it purports to help some 9,600 currently homeless persons. In reality, the plan will add only 300 “Tiny Homes” while the remainder of the proposal is for so-called “safe parking” or “safe ground” when the money could and should be spent on actual housing.
In fact, the City did just that when it recently used federal, state and city money to pay Saint John’s Program for Real Change to provide 11 modular homes which can house up to 55 people. As described in the Sacramento 
Bee, “The 865-square-foot modular homes, built on a former parking lot, include two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and living room.”
The city now has $100,000,000, enough to permanently and safely house hundreds of if not thousands of homeless families and individuals using this approach. And until such time as real housing is provided, the city has an obligation to bring vital infrastructure, water, sanitation services, etc. to the existing encampments if the lives and safety of homeless citizens of Sacramento mean anything to Mayor Steinberg.
Indeed, while the Master Plan’s call for a 700- person facility and other concentrations of many persons in one place, the lesson of COVID-19 is that congregant shelters are DANGEROUS as outbreaks in San Francisco and more recently Santa Rosa showed. As the Delta variant surges and scientists warn of future pandemics, Steinberg’s plan completely ignores this risk, one specifically referenced in guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Unlike others who purport to advocate for the homeless, the Homeless Union is not going to legitimize the “Master Plan” by suggesting ways to improve it; The Plan is a fraud, a giveaway to professional poverty profiteers and a self-dealing handout to City bureaucrats. We encourage those on the Sacramento City
Council to carefully consider the true objectives of the Administration. The “Master Plan” is the “spoonful of sugar” that will shortly “make the medicine go down.”
Except this spoon is filled with poison, a poison rooted in the worst aspects of American history: forced displacement and exclusion of other “disfavored” and stereotyped populations in the genocidal clearing of the Native Americans, the segregation in housing and all other arenas of African Americans and Latinos, the exclusion of the Chinese, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
What would “an obligation to accept shelter” look like in Sacramento? Threats of arrest, prosecution, physical displacement, civil conservatorship against those who are unwilling to have their families separated? Personal possessions taken, personal freedoms of association and speech curtailed, the unhoused robbed of their dignity and the truth behind homelessness falsified? The Homeless Union is not going to wait around to find out. We reject the false narrative behind “obligation to accept shelter,” the lie that homeless persons don’t want real housing don’t deserve real housing.
As the August 10 City Council Meeting nears, the Homeless Union may issue additional statements on the ill-considered, facially unconstitutional “Master Plan.” However, more important than what at we say, is what we do. Given the likelihood that the City Council will approve this plan, the Homeless Union is preparing resistance on all fronts, particularly amongst our members and the homeless community in general.
Crystal Sanchez is President, Sacramento Homeless Union
Anthony Prince, is Lead Organizer and Legal Counsel, California Homeless Union/Statewide Organizing Council
Per the information I’ve been told, we cannot ask people not to camp in inappropriate areas – along the ditch on F Street, in our neighborhood parks, etc. – unless the City provides an alternative place to camp. That is what it sounds like the City of Sacramento is doing – following the outcome and demands of a recent lawsuit in Southern CA to provide sanctioned camping areas and better shelter for the more vulnerable. Obviously, the status quo is not working for communities and people need safe places where they can go so they can transition away from tent living on sidewalks, in drainage ditches, shoulders of rail lines and highways, etc into more traditional housing. There might be rules, but all types of housing have rules of behaviour that people are expected to follow. West Sacramento moved a large number of people into motels and then worked with them to get them into more permanent housing. A surprising number of people walked away from this and went back to living houseless. That is their right. So the community has a right to create spaces where camping is permitted and direct people to move out of inappropriate spaces.
Not surprising at all. It’s called drug addiction.
Yes. And unfortunately with the stupid-arse Boise decision, it’s their right to live wherever they want in Davis unless Davis provides them shelter. So of course they’ll move to Davis if we do that and that means even more shelter will be required to fill the vacuum, or we’ll build more shelter. All the while making it easier and softer for them to live a cushy drug addiction and kill themselves faster.
Good luck with that stratedgy (see above).
Hospitality principle:
A city with net positive migration can get more land. Accepted causes include having a sanctioned camping ground for voluntary campers.
Each city does not need to provide any camping site. Designated camping sites can be outside city limits, and are treated as their own city for the sake of calculating net migration to get land.
Sounds like they “only” need 60,000 (not 63,000) units, then. 🙂
I thought “sprawl” was supposed to solve this problem, anyway. The Sacramento region has plenty of that.
Actually, I would suspect that a lot more people than that cannot afford Sacramento, and a lot more than that can – depending upon the parameters used.
And if 60,000 people cannot afford Sacramento, just think of how many cannot afford Davis (let alone San Francisco, and the Bay Area). It’s got to be at least 61,000.
Though truth be told, Sacramento is not “one” housing market, either.
Pretty sure that anyone can come up with nonsensical numbers.
Is that right? $100,000,000? Is that from Uncle Biden?
How mean of Mr. Steinberg, to sit on that. 🙂 Hell, they can literally make enough housing using the dollar bills themselves – as building material.
How’s their fiscal deficit coming along? How about their school system, for that matter?
Lest you think I’m a heartless bastard, I generally do support government-supported safe shelters for anyone who needs it. These can take many forms, and can be located in many locations (not necessarily/exactly where homeless people currently congregate, or even necessarily in the same city where they’re currently located).
And when those are in place, I don’t support blatant/obvious outdoor urban camping, elsewhere. And would support discouragement from doing so.
Again, a general comment, not a specific one.