Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO, CA – A virtual small army of city of Sacramento police, firefighters, code enforcement, animal control and other workers invaded the previously sanctioned homeless outpost known as Camp Resolution early Monday, rousting about 50 disabled and senior residents.
The city promised it would empty the camp after the lease was canceled by Safe Ground Sacramento, a longstanding ally of the unhoused that now claims it could no longer provide necessities to the residents, largely because of the city of Sacramento’s apparent desire to close the encampment, which has city-provided trailers but not much else.
Although news reports suggested some people—residents and/or supporters—were either arrested or detained, details could not be confirmed as of late Monday evening.
The Sacramento Homeless Union issued a fiery statement Monday noting it has a Friday court date in a last-ditch attempt to obtain a temporary restraining order from Sacramento Superior Court. A similar attempt failed earlier in August.
“The mayor, the City’s official website and a handful of phony ‘homeless advocates’ today blamed the Homeless Union for the spectacle of destruction and human suffering at what for two years was a safe refuge for the majority of female, majority elderly and majority disabled residents,” said Anthony Prince, chief legal counsel for the homeless union.
“Today the City of Sacramento indelibly smeared itself with disgrace, violating state and federal disability laws after being warned not to do so by the Disability Rights California, designated the states’ official agency in 1978 for protection and advocacy of the disabled by an act of Congress,” Prince added.
Prince charged city “bulldozers crushed the RVs in which human beings have safely lived for two years… skip loaders dumped clothing, food, medicine, and other personal property belonging to the residents… caused people to suffer seizures and mental health crises, to watch everything they owned get crushed and carted off like trash.”
Prince, in the statement, added, “SPD Lt. Will Conner…told us that the trailers and RVs and everything in them would be left intact at the site so that their owners could reclaim them (and) then ordered the complete destruction of the camp and everything in it.”
“Who was it that wrongfully terminated its lease with the City of Sacramento on July 23 and handed them the excuse they needed to close the camp? Was that the Homeless Union? Or was that Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc., whose Executive Director Mark Merin had the shameless nerve to show up while the camp was being destroyed and tell the homeless not to worry because the City was going to build a tiny home village right where Camp Resolution once stood,” Prince said.
Prince’s statement added, “They say a lie travels half-way around the world before the truth gets out of bed. The Homeless Union and the courageous residents who held their ground, refused to let the City break its promise of individual, durable permanent housing without a fight.
“For our part, the Union and the Camp Resolution residents will rise from this massacre stronger than before. And we are confident that while some will cheer, still others will share our disgust that a City that pays its City Manager over half-a-million dollars and wasted another $125 million taxpayer dollars can’t figure out a way to house its residents.”
For its part, the city of Sacramento claimed it offered “alternate shelter” to residents and offered “support and services to the exiting guests,” and last week “offered to place people in motel rooms to accommodate the needs of certain guests, with intensive outreach continuing over the weekend.”
“Safe Ground Sacramento in July notified the City that it was terminating its lease for the Colfax site, effective Aug. 10. The lease provided Safe Ground Sacramento with 15 days to clean up the site and deliver it free of all property and guests. The City has been in communication with Camp organizers and posted multiple notifications at the site with this information, as well as notices to vacate,” the city said in a statement.
The camp has been open since March 2023, added the city, to provide a “a safe place for unsheltered residents to stay temporarily as they sought more suitable housing.”
“Unfortunately, Camp Resolution has proven to be a failed experiment, largely because of the counterproductive interventions from the Sacramento Homeless Union, which purports to represent the best interests of the people staying there,” the city claims.
In fact, the city blames the Sacramento Homeless Union for refusing “contact with outreach staff from the City’s Department of Community Response, and calls to camp leadership for access to the site have not been successful.”
