A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to shelter or house all homeless people living on skid row by October. Mayor Darrell Steinberg wants to impose a similar order on the city of Sacramento.
“I would rather have Sacramento bravely lead than follow,” Steinberg said during his State of the City address last Wednesday. “Let’s do it ourselves without a court order. I don’t expect perfection or a cure. But a legal requirement will change the mindset and expectations of our city and the region. When something really matters, we require it.”
Sacramento would be the first city in the country to enact both a legal right to shelter or housing, and a parallel obligation for homeless people to accept it, Steinberg said. If the City Council adopts the mayor’s ambitious proposal, the city could require itself to shelter or house all its homeless people by a certain date.
It would be a heavy lift. In January 2019, the most recent data available, volunteers estimated 5,570 homeless people were living in Sacramento County. About 70% were sleeping outdoors, and 73% were living in the city. During the course of the year, 10,000 to 11,000 people would experience homelessness, researchers found.
Next month the council will adopt a “master siting plan” to create “5,000 new beds, roofs and spaces,” Steinberg said.
Once the beds are available, if a homeless person declines to go into shelter or housing, they could face civil enforcement, not criminal enforcement, said Mary Lynne Vellinga, Steinberg’s spokeswoman.
Bob Erlenbusch of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness said he was supportive of a requirement that the city house or shelter every homeless person, but has questions about the enforcement piece.
“I think its an incredible precedent for our community to provide that kind of progressive leadership,” Erlenbusch said. “But there are still a lot of issues that need to be explained.”
It’s not the first time Steinberg has floated the idea. The Council of Regional Homeless Advisors, of which Steinberg is co-chair, last year recommended that all localities in California be required to house their homeless populations. The statewide mandate could have been imposed by a court action, a bill in the state legislature or by executive action by Gov. Gavin Newsom. It never came to fruition.
It did have an impact in Southern California, however.
Steinberg originally announced the “right to shelter” idea in July 2019 in an interview with The Sacramento Bee and a Los Angeles Times op-ed. The op-ed was then “foundational” in the lawsuit that eventually led to the judge ordering Los Angeles to house or shelter all homeless people on skid row, said Daniel Conway, a policy advisor for the L.A. Alliance, the plaintiff.
“Not only was it a cornerstone and helped get us off the the ground but something we’ve come back to again and again,” Conway said. “We wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for that op-ed and that concept.”
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hold a hearing on the case next month, Conway said.
From The Sacramento Bee
