Sacramento’s $22.5 million plan for homelessness: 500 new shelter beds to open in 2020
After years of struggling to combat the city’s growing homeless population, the Sacramento City Council has a plan to get hundreds of people off the street in 2020.
The Council on Tuesday took a step toward spending $22.5 million in expected private and state money to open 500 shelter beds in large semi-permanent tents, cabins, converted motels and scattered existing apartments. While the council did not take a formal vote on the spending plan, it directed city housing officials to move forward with the funding and a timeline for opening the facilities.
“I just insist following tonight that we follow through with urgency, with passion and with speed,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. “Not just raise the money, not just pass resolutions, but actually get more people indoors.”
The city’s 100-bed Meadowview shelter with on-site services, originally set to open in February for women and children, will now open in April for women only, officials said. A 100-bed shelter for adult men and women with services is set to open in May under the W/X freeway in North Oak Park.
The council previously approved roughly $20 million to open the two shelters and plans to spend about an additional $6.4 million to operate them for two years.
In the meantime, the city may be able to open a parking lot where homeless can safely sleep in their vehicles. Officials said that facility could open as early as January.
Councilman Rick Jennings sent staff from his office to visit several other cities in the state that operate safe parking lots for the homeless. He is searching for a site in his district, which includes Pocket, Greenhaven and Valley Hi, said Dennis Rogers, his chief of staff.
Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency officials estimate the safe parking lot would cost $1.1 million per year to operate, serving about 60 people at a time.
Rogers said it would be less expensive if guests can use bathrooms in an existing building on the site. In the city of San Jose, it costs about $400,000 per year to operate a safe parking lot with 17 to 20 spots, said Rogers. Families cycle through the spots roughly every 90 to 120 days before moving into permanent housing, Rogers said.
Shelters in apartments, cabins
The city plans to shelter 150 families in existing apartments scattered around the city, with some starting in March, according to an SHRA staff report.
The city has spent all the funding it has currently available to address homelessness, but is expecting to receive more private and state funding in the coming months. Steinberg plans to have secured a commitment from private donors by the end of the month for at least $8.5 million, he said. The city also expects about $14 million in state funding this spring.
Steinberg asked SHRA executive director LaShelle Dozier if any “cabin” style homes – such as those that a Seattle-area company pitched to city officials last month – could open by Jan. 1.
“This timetable, though it is good and aggressive, doesn’t quite get us through the winter,” Steinberg said.
Dozier said if a site is secured, the agency would “move heaven and earth” to try to meet that deadline.
Councilman Allen Warren has proposed a site in north Sacramento for cabins, as well as tents and permanent housing, but the city would have to pay $440,000 to buy the property from the Twin Rivers Unified School District.
Steinberg said he has spoken to the superintendent of the district and is trying to find out if the site would be environmentally safe. The district moved the Harmon Johnson Elementary School from the site, next to a PG&E underground natural gas storage facility, after the deadly San Bruno gas line explosion in 2010.
Councilman Jeff Harris said he also has a site in his district, which includes East Sacramento and North Sacramento, that could work for cabins. Harris is proposing a village of 49 tiny homes for homeless women and children on city-owned property at Northgate Boulevard and Patio Avenue, close to Garden Valley Elementary School.
The cabins, as well as a converted motel, could open between July and December 2020, the SHRA report said. Harris has proposed converting the Motel 6 at 30th and N streets to a homeless shelter.
The winter sanctuary program, where houses of worship hosted 100 homeless people nightly through the winter, ended this year. The city’s Capitol Park Hotel shelter houses more than 100 homeless people downtown, but is typically full, like other shelters in the city.
The city has not opened warming centers the last two winters, as temperatures did not hit freezing for three consecutive nights. This winter, even if that temperature threshold is not hit, Steinberg and Jennings proposed opening warming centers. The council could vote on that idea, which the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness requested, next week.
“We have the opportunity to save lives here,” Steinberg said.
Sacramento County’s homeless population is increasing, with more than 5,570 people homeless on any given night, mostly in the city, according to a January count. That count estimated homeless people, including about 100 children, were sleeping in about 340 vehicles.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
