Sacramento approves two dozen cabins to shelter homeless youth set to open next month
A facility with two dozen cabin-style shelters and services for homeless young people will open next month in north Sacramento, the City Council approved Tuesday.
The temporary development, called Emergency Bridge Housing at Grove Avenue, will be located at a vacant lot next to St. Paul Church of God In Christ, near the corner of Las Palmas and Grove avenues.
The cabins will house 48 “transitional age youth,” ages 18 to 24, and also provide them with job training, financial literacy, rehousing services and mental health services as needed.
The goal is to move guests into permanent housing every six months to a year, a staff report said. Once fully up and running, the project could serve 80 to 100 young people annually. Eventually, another 26 cabins could be added, bringing the total to 100 beds.
The new cabins will be monitored 24/7 by surveillance cameras, said Sarah O’Daniel, the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s director of homeless innovation. Local organizations such as Wind Youth Services and Sacramento Steps Forward will help refer guests, so there will not be lines forming outside the facility, O’Daniel said.
The SHRA plans to purchase the cabins from Denver-based Tuff Shed. Sacramento nonprofit First Steps Communities will operate the shelter.
Many “transitional age youth” are young people who age out of foster care and have nowhere to go. Volunteers in January 2019 counted 5,570 homeless people living in Sacramento County, including 415 people who were between the ages 18 and 25. Over half of the people in that age range were sleeping outdoors.
“Their trauma is unique and they need their own living quarters,” O’Daniel said. “If we help them stabilize now, they’re less likely to become chronically-homeless in the future.”
Councilman Allen Warren said during a community meeting Monday night residents were not making “not in my backyard” types of comments that are common when homeless shelter sites are announced.
Some residents even volunteered to work at the shelters, O’Daniel said.
“Hopefully in the in next 60 days, we’ll have a project we will be able to point to and say, ‘This is one of the major steps in moving the city forward,’” Warren said.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg agreed.
“There were a lot of hard questions asked and yet very little drama,” Steinberg said. “I think that is a sign in and of itself of how far we’ve come ... we’ve created a norm here.”
Steinberg also urged operators to try to move people into permanent housing every four to six months instead of six months to a year, he said.
The 24 cabins will cost about $5.6 million for two years, including individualized case management services and operations, the staff report said. The 50 cabins will cost roughly $7.6 million. The funding will mostly come from state homelessness funding. The cabins will allow the city to fulfill Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “100-day challenge” to receive additional state funding.
“This is the first time we’ve attempted a tiny home or cabin project in the city,” Councilman Jeff Harris said. “This is really a proving ground.”
Harris has proposed the city open cabin-style shelters for women and children at Northgate and Patio avenues. Warren has proposed tiny homes, tents and permanent housing for 700 homeless and low-income people at Edgewater Road and Lampasas Avenue.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is donating 50 portable air conditioning units to be installed in the units, officials said.
The roughly 18 cabin-style shelters currently open near the site, called Compassion Village, will remain in place, officials said.
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 5:29 PM.
