Sacramento to open warming center for homeless. Will it stay open through the winter?
The Sacramento City Council decided to open a warming center to shelter the homeless on Wednesday night after a vicious storm destroyed homeless camps and injured some unhoused residents the night before.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he hopes the city will keep the homeless warming center open every night through the end of the winter.
Steinberg made the request after facing strong backlash for not opening a warming center or any emergency facilities during a severe winter storm Tuesday night. With all shelters in the city typically full, thousands of homeless people had nowhere to go. At least one person died.
“I want multiple sites open now and every night until the end of winter,” the mayor said in a news release.
The city’s Twitter feed indicated the warming center at the Tsakopoulos library downtown was scheduled to open at 8 p.m. Wednesday and close at 8 a.m. Thursday. City spokesman Tim Swanson said the center would stay open beyond Wednesday night. It was unclear whether the facility would stay open through the winter, as Steinberg requested.
“Timeline details currently are being developed,” Swanson said in an email. “The city will share more information as soon as it becomes available.”
The change to a full-time winter warming center is what activists asked for last month, when Steinberg announced the center would open any night it hit 32 degrees. That’s a looser restriction than the three consecutive nights of freezing previously used to determine if the city will open warming centers — the threshold the county still uses.
The warming center will have a capacity for 60 people, with room for expansion if needed, Swanson said. Guests will be allowed to bring pets and belongings.
“No more states of emergencies being defined by artificial temperature criteria,” Steinberg said Wednesday. “It’s cold and it’s winter. End of story as far as I’m concerned.”
The council also adopted a new emergency declaration Tuesday, this time tied to severe weather. That’s on top of an emergency declaration it already has related to the coronavirus, and one related to a homeless shelter crisis.
The city will explore using the Southside Park pool house as a second warming center, as well as the City Hall parking garage and Tower Bridge parking garage for people living in cars to safely park, City Manager Howard Chan said. The city will also increase the number of motel vouchers it has available for the homeless to pay for short-term stays. Chan will have $1 million to spend to get homeless indoors this week through a variety of means.
Some on the council want to think bigger.
City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, after drying her tears she shed over a homeless person who died in her district the night before, suggested the city explore using Golden 1 Center downtown for homeless or Sacramento State dorms. Chan said the city will reach out to Sacramento State. Steinberg said Golden 1 will not work.
“I did speak to the Kings and they have a regular schedule,” Steinberg said. “They’re in the midst of their season so that does not work.”
The Kings are on a road trip and their next home game, which will be played without fans, is next Wednesday.
Councilman Jeff Harris suggested the city explore using the vacant Cal Expo fairground buildings. Councilwoman Mai Vang suggested the downtown Memorial Auditorium or Convention Center, which Chan said the city would explore.
San Diego opened its convention center to the homeless this winter, but it did result in a coronavirus outbreak there.
Sacramento has largely avoided a major coronavirus outbreak among its homeless population. The city has not opened warming centers more often this winter partly due to concerns about an outbreak, Daniel Bowers, the city’s director of emergency management, has said.
Bob Erlenbusch, of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said the action was a step in the right direction but the council needs to find space for many more people this winter.
“We have 10,000 homeless people,” Erlenbusch wrote in an email to the council ahead of the meeting. “We need hundreds of warming center spaces tonight!”
Longtime homeless activist Nikki Jones agreed. “This item should have, could have happened last night,” Jones said. The council’s regular Tuesday meeting started at 5 p.m., just as the storm was starting to ravage the city.
City officials are also exploring whether they can open many more hotels for the homeless and be reimbursed from the federal government, under an executive order President Joe Biden signed Thursday. The order mentions the possibility of reimbursing cities for opening “non-congregate shelters” during the coronavirus pandemic through September, though is unclear on the details. The city might be able to get reimbursed for motel vouchers, as well, which would allow for a significant expansion.
The city and county currently have three hotels sheltering hundreds of homeless people during the pandemic under the state’s Project Roomkey program, as well as a 50-bed women’s shelter in Meadowview. But those shelters, like all shelters in Sacramento, are typically full. According to a January 2019 count, more than 5,570 people are homeless in Sacramento County on any given night, and an estimated 10,000 to 11,000 people would experience homelessness at some point that year. In 2019, a record high of 138 homeless people died on the streets.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 7:17 PM.
