By Crescenzo Vellucci
The Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO, CA – Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho Tuesday is at it again in his legal fight with the city of Sacramento over the homeless issue—this time, the DA amended his complaint filed three months ago accusing the city of not doing its job to control the homeless population.
In a “dog and pony” show along Steelhead Creek and the American and Sacramento rivers Tuesday, Ho accused the city of allowing the unhoused to pollute the rivers—his earlier pleadings blamed those without a place to live for blocking sidewalks, and any number of wrongdoings.
The 48-page amended pleading—193 pages including exhibits ranging from photos of homeless encampments to correspondence with the city—charges the city is sanctioning the dumping of trash, including human waste, into the rivers by the unhoused.
Ho’s filing in Sacramento Superior Court asks for “injunctive/equitable relief requiring the City to take such action as is necessary so that it no longer suffers a nuisance on its own property.”
While the Sacramento County DA complains about the presence of about 10,000 or more unhoused in the Sacramento, and the impact they may have on the environment, he also has complained about solutions the city and nonprofits have introduced to try to help the homeless, including so-called “Safe Ground” encampments, and parking areas for RVs and trucks to keep the homeless off the streets.
Ho has demanded the city arrest and prosecute the unhoused if they block sidewalks, saying inactions by the city— “through the use of the ‘Darrell Directive,’” as described by Ho in his pleadings—have “caused the decay of our Capital City, resulting in the unhoused crisis that is the subject of this litigation.”
Mayor Darrell Steinberg has noticed, calling Ho’s act “performative distraction,” and Tuesday, Steinberg described Ho’s tour of the homeless encampments a “media stunt.”
“In politics, they say there are two kinds of people: work horses and show horses,” the mayor said in a statement. “While the DA was traipsing around on a levee with the press in tow this morning, the city and county of Sacramento were jointly taking an important step toward actually getting people off the street.”
Steinberg disclosed county supervisors Tuesday approved a Safe Stay sleeping cabin community on Stockton Boulevard, and said a new 175 sleeping cabins project is set to open to the east near Watt Ave.
The Sacramento Homeless Union has charged the DA is “peddling with his sensationalist, distorted and insincere ‘concerns’ about hazards…only to advance his political career.”
“What we don’t need is the unprincipled, dishonest and politically-driven interference of this district attorney. His phony concern for the homeless is a fraud and he is a disgrace to the office that he holds,” charged Anthony D. Prince, Lead Organizer/General Counsel of the California Homeless Union and Attorney for Sacramento Homeless Union
Ho, in a letter to the city, said officials may face “criminal liability” for allowing unhoused citizens to live at Camp Resolution in Miller Park, calling the site “dangerous and deplorable to house the unsheltered on a toxic dumpsite where people are exposed to cancer-causing chemicals. To do so is not only inhumane but raises questions regarding criminal liability.”
Ho has been, since earlier this year, attempting to convince the city to arrest the unhoused, even, as Prince has said, encouraging the city to violate a federal court order.
That move by Ho has led him to be investigated by the State Bar for wrongdoing.
Prince said he’s received confirmation the State Bar is continuing its probe of Ho, after the union’s complaint charged Ho with “using a threat of criminal prosecution to force the City of Sacramento to violate a federal injunction to cease clearing homeless encampments during this summer’s extreme heat.”
“Apparently not happy that he remains under investigation by the California State Bar for violations of professional conduct, (Ho) is now targeting Union leaders as well as homeless advocates ‘Safe Ground Sacramento’ and the City of Sacramento for allegedly maintaining a public nuisance at Camp Resolution,” wrote Prince.
“Once again, Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho is playing a deadly game of politics and deception with his threat to criminally prosecute the City of Sacramento, homeless advocate Safe Ground Sacramento and, possibly, officers of the Sacramento Homeless Union,” added Prince.
The union’s lawyer said that “there is no doubt that…(Ho’s) distortions, false statements, out-of-context quotes and inflammatory language,” (are) the “height of hypocrisy for this District Attorney to feign false concern for the well-being of the unhoused when… in the middle of triple-digit temperatures, he was insisting—at the threat of criminally prosecuting the City – that 16 homeless encampments located in the shade be immediately removed. “
The union, at that time, called Ho’s conduct into extreme question, noting Ho’s “less than truthful public pronouncements in service of your public campaign against the unhoused by way of your demands on the City, raise substantial questions as to your honesty, trustworthiness and fitness as a lawyer in other respects.”
Prince wrote, “Where has Thien Ho been all this time? Where was this official who one day rails against ‘homeless criminals’ the next day becoming the ‘champion’ of the unhoused, playing all sides and every side so long as it advances his political career.”
