SACRAMENTO, CA – The battle to keep open “Camp Resolution,” a city of Sacramento-approved unhoused community members, has taken another, almost bizarre turn when the longtime homeless advocate—Safe Ground Sacramento—informed the several score of mostly disabled and elder occupants their lease would be terminated Aug. 10, throwing the residents into the streets, according to the Sacramento Homeless Union.
The union asked the Sacramento County Superior Court Monday to grant an immediate hearing to prevent the city of Sacramento from evicting the residents upon the dissolution of the lease with Safe Ground.
“The Sacramento Homeless Union filed a motion in the Sacramento County Superior Court seeking an injunction to stop the City of Sacramento from the closing of Camp Resolution,” claiming that after a suit against the city in May, Camp Resolution residents have the “right to remain in Camp Resolution and [that] prohibits the City from closing the Camp until every resident is provided with ‘individual, durable, permanent’ housing,” according to an email from the Homeless Union Monday.
The union explained it was “forced to file today’s motion after leaseholder Safe Ground Sacramento—over the strenuous objection of the Union and the Camp Resolution residents—actually issued its own Lease Termination notice to take effect on August 10, five days from now, claiming the organization could no longer carry out its obligations under the Lease Agreement.”
The union added it is expecting a hearing this week.
In its pleadings filed Monday, the union is asking the court for a temporary order and preliminary injunction “enjoining the City of Sacramento from closing Camp Resolution and ordering Specific Performance of the City’s obligation to refrain from closing the Camp until all residents are placed in individual, permanent durable housing.”
The union insists in its complaint, “Plaintiffs are residents and third-party intended beneficiaries of a ground lease agreement between the City of Sacramento and Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc.,” who filed a lawsuit earlier this year that led to the city rescinding the lease termination notice.
However, as noted by Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince in the filing, “it became lessee Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc.’s turn to wrongfully terminate the lease effective August 10, 2024.”
In a missive sent to Prince, SGS stated it was impossible to “comply with the provisions of the lease.”
Citing the city’s “failure to provide the ‘substantial financial support’ for providing a water supply and electricity to the site.” It also noted a lack of insurance.
Prince writes, “Despite determined efforts by plaintiffs to dissuade SGS from going forward with the
termination—including advising SGS Executive Director and Attorney Mark Merin that SGS had not complied with the notice and other requirements of the Lease pertaining to termination—SGS is undeterred.”
Prince added in his filing that “the City is champing at the bit to once again break both its promise on which plaintiffs have reasonably and detrimentally relied and its continuing obligation to respect the fully-vested rights of the intended third-party beneficiaries to remain at Camp Resolution until they are permanently housed.
“The City has refused to respond to plaintiffs’ inquiries as to how the City might remove residents and what, if any, alternative arrangements might be made to ensure that removing them will not increase the risk of harm to the displaced.”
The union then informs the court, “Accordingly, unless this Court intervenes, the residents will, in a matter of days, be summarily ejected, scattered throughout Sacramento County and…placed at great risk of immediate and irreparable harm.”
On a narrow technical issue, Prince insists SGS erred in the initial lease with Camp Resolution residents, by stating they had no rights as residents, and the court now should “find and declare that plaintiff residents of Camp Resolution have been and continue to be expressly intended third-party beneficiaries.”
The “rights of the residents to remain at Camp Resolution until they are permanently housed have been fully vested because, in this case, Camp leadership was directly involved in the negotiations, plaintiffs’ counsel held general meetings at the Camp to go over in detail and vote on each successive draft as plaintiffs’ counsel and City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood spent four months hammering out the final Agreement,” according the union’s pleadings.
The union noted that “this Court should enjoin the City from either removing the residents, deliberately curtailing services to bring about a ‘constructive eviction’ or closing the Camp,” citing the “irreparable harm to the physical safety, health and ability of the ejected residents to survive in the absence of a preliminary injunction.”
Prince said that although the city has told residents to vacate by Aug. 10, SGS Executive Director and attorney Merin, “despite having terminated the lease, has informed plaintiffs that SGS ‘will not be removing folks, nor instructing them to vacate the property,’ thereby giving the City the green light to carry out the physical ejectment of plaintiffs and whatever possessions they can carry with them into the homeless streets of Sacramento.”
Prince told the court in his filings that whatever “plaintiffs can’t take with them and is left behind will be bulldozed just as assuredly as their right to remain until safely, permanently housed is bulldozed by promisor City of Sacramento.
“Camp Resolution, although beset with many issues, has nevertheless achieved world-wide recognition for its successes. Among them and most relevant to the purpose of the Camp, the site has become a staging ground allowing the Union to successfully place sixteen persons in permanent housing. “
Prince added, “If the closing of the Camp standing alone doesn’t qualify as an irreparable harm…then what is likely to happen to them when the gates are locked certainly does. The results could be catastrophic and include separation of plaintiffs from daily life-sustaining support including medical care, meals, water, harm reduction, and the loss of the trailers required and provided by the City per the Lease which offered protection from the elements.
”The Court is urged to carefully consider the evidence of imminent, irreparable harm, including increased risk of great bodily harm and even death,” noted Prince, claiming women at the site all suffer “from a physical and/or mental disability—if they are separated from the survival support they currently receive from literally hundreds of community members and are exiled into the streets of Sacramento [that] far outweighs whatever ‘burden’ could be asserted by the City of keeping the Camp open.”
