Night of terror: Sacramento homeless lined up for shelter during storm. The doors never opened
The wind blew the rain sideways Tuesday night. Trees that had stood for decades collapsed into homes and streets. And Karen Hunter, a 57-year-old homeless woman and mother of three, lay alone on a mattress in a small green tent under the W-X freeway.
She wouldn’t make it through the night.
Hunter’s friend found her that night, face down in her ripped tent. That’s when Harold Carter got the call: his partner of 27 years had died.
On Thursday, as Sacramento continued to clean up from its most violent storm in years, Carter walked along 26th Street. He saw Karen’s empty tent and was reminded of the loss. He broke down. “She was a warm, loving person,” Carter said. “She was my everything.”
The storm was not a surprise. The vicious winds and torrential rain had been forecast for days. And yet city and county leaders chose not to open emergency warming shelters for the region’s most vulnerable residents. City Manager Howard Chan declined to open a warming center at a downtown library that had sheltered homeless just the night before – despite inquiries from Mayor Darrell Steinberg and at least four City Council members about doing so, The Sacramento Bee has learned.
If Sacramento leaders had acted, Hunter would have gone inside, Carter said.
“It would have helped her a lot,” Carter, 52, said. “Yeah, it would’ve helped her a lot.”
Hunter, who had been homeless for about a year, was always trying to find ways to get indoors, Carter said. She had received a motel voucher for the pair to stay at a Motel 6, but it expired in early January, leaving them back on the streets.
The coroner’s office has not yet determined Hunter’s cause of death or released her identification. She suffered from seizures and diabetes. While it’s unclear whether the storm played a direct role in her death, Carter thinks that if his partner had gotten indoors that night, it might have saved her life.
Thousands of homeless men, women and children in Sacramento spent a night of terror Tuesday as the powerful storm battered the region. Hunter’s death, the death of three others and the widespread suffering provided a stark reminder of just how dire Sacramento’s homeless crisis has become – and how local officials have failed to solve it.
A night of terror for homeless
At least four homeless people died in Sacramento between Monday and Wednesday afternoon. That doesn’t count those who were transported to area hospitals and died there.
As the storm raged for hours Tuesday night, the worst night of the multi-day weather event, thousands were terrified they would meet the same fate.
In the tent next to Hunter, Mark Jordan shivered in his tent. “I just thought my heart was gonna stop I was so cold,” he said. A few blocks away, Chirley Smith was alone in a trailer near the W-X freeway while trees fell around her. The trailer, which she bought in December, started leaking, rain pouring over her bed and floor. Her clothes, shoes and skin were wet, causing her to shiver as she feared for her life.
She stood under the W-X overpass on Thursday and pointed in the direction of a large branch lying across 20th Street, yellow caution tape around it. “That branch flew like it had wings and hit the ground like an earthquake,” Smith, 47, said. “I was thinking the whole tree was gonna fall and I wasn’t gonna be here anymore.”
In a North Sacramento industrial park, outside a now-closed city shelter, a mother and two small children were up all night as water poured in from their trailer’s roof. In downtown, heavy palm fronds fell on people camping on sidewalks. Along the pitch-black riverfront, the thousands camping there had no warning that tree limbs would be crashing down or that grocery carts would be flying across the bike trail and striking them. A tree collapsed on a man sleeping in a tent, trapping him until emergency crews arrived. A homeless veteran’s tent was ripped to shreds, an American flag perched among the wreckage.
“It looks like a tornado hit the camps,” homeless activist Crystal Sanchez, president of the Sacramento Homeless Union, said.
Of the 1,200 tents Sanchez estimates are within one square mile of Loaves and Fishes, one of the city’s primary service providers to the homeless, only a handful were still intact Wednesday morning. A woman named Renee showed up to the nonprofit Wednesday morning after her tent blew away, shaking and wearing only a bra and underwear. She allowed the Maryhouse director Shannon Dominguez-Stevens to take her photo. It shows the freezing woman wrapped in three blankets, clasping a hot cup of coffee in her hands, her swollen feet in a warm tub of water.
“Send it to the mayor,” Renee said.
A wake up call?
As the storm rolled in, people lined up outside the downtown Tsakopoulos Library Galleria, where the city had opened a warming center the night before. They thought surely it would open again Tuesday, given the forecast. But the doors never opened.
Homeless activist Audrey Sarber said at least 100 homeless people were near the downtown library that night – and many would have sought shelter inside had it been open.
“They couldn’t even move to unbundle their blankets from their faces,” Sarber said, close to tears as she recalled that horrifying night. “I offered them socks. Some of them said to save them for the next person. That was the thing that made me go home crying. That those people who have nothing were more concerned about the next person having something. They have nothing, and the city has millions.”
Despite a global pandemic that has devastated much of the economy, the city is on track to have a roughly $40 million budget surplus for the current fiscal year. A warming center typically costs about $52 per person per night. By contrast, the city paid nearly $14 million in police overtime last year and is spending $14.4 million on an aquatics complex in North Natomas.
While the homeless waited in line for shelter, the City Council members were sitting in their homes holding a virtual council meeting. The City Council knew the storm was coming and that the warming center would not open that night. Not counting the wind chill, the temperature was not forecast to hit the 32-degree threshold that triggers the opening of city warming centers.
City manager decided not to open center
City Manager Howard Chan told The Sacramento Bee it was his decision not to open the downtown warming center Tuesday night.
That morning, Steinberg’s staff asked Chan if the center could open that night and Chan declined, citing county guidelines on when the facilities should open, Chan said.
Council members Katie Valenzuela, Mai Vang and Eric Guerra told The Bee they all asked Chan on Tuesday morning and afternoon if the city could open the downtown warming center that night. Councilwoman Angelique Ashby also asked Chan Tuesday if a center anywhere in the city could open quickly, she said. Chan told them all no, citing county guidelines and public health orders, they each told The Bee.
“The last thing we want to do is bring a bunch of people in and have a COVID outbreak,” Chan told The Bee.
Asked if he would make the same decision again, he said, “maybe.”
“If I had perfect vision, that way, 20/20 and knew that there was not going to be any outbreaks, and that I was not going to put anybody in harm’s way, our guests or employees, the answer is, of course, I would have activated (the center),” Chan said. “But at the time, you have to work with the best information that you have.”
Chan is unaware of anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 as a result of the warming center, which was open on two nights ahead of the storm with virus safety protocols in place. The centers were not at capacity those nights or other nights the center has opened since the storm, Chan pointed out.
“It’s tragic,” Chan said of Hunter’s death when asked. “That somebody died, whether it was on a stormy night or not.”
Valenzuela, who represents the central city, said she will be more forceful in the future on opening emergency shelters.
“Now I know I just can’t take ‘no’ as an answer anymore because clearly that’s just a matter of political will,” she said.
Ashby said she “asked city staff (on Tuesday) if we could open a two-week center like we did in 2016, and I offered to raise the money to run it, just as I have done previously.
“The answer was that the county public health order was an issue,” Ashby said in a text message. “That answer was not a surprise to me as the county public health order has previously been a point of contention. If we are looking to place blame for the lack of a warming center being open on Tuesday, then I am at least in part to blame. I could have pushed harder.”
Storm roars in
Toward the end of the Tuesday City Council meeting, realizing how bad the storm was going to be and getting blasted on social media by activists, the mayor erupted.
“People are going to die tonight!” he exclaimed before ending the meeting around 10 p.m. “We can’t get a Goddamn warming center open more than one night because the county has rules? I’m sick of this!”
But the county did not stop the city from opening a warming center, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said. In a news release Friday, the county said its Office of Emergency Services has guidance for local cities facing weather emergencies, but that “this criteria is a guide to trigger an emergency response on a countywide scale, but does not limit cities within the county from opening a warming center under any conditions they see fit and offers material support when they do.”
Wednesday morning, facing increased pressure to respond, City Council members and Chan called an emergency meeting. The result proved that some of the potentially life-saving actions homeless activists have been begging the council to take for years are not time-consuming or expensive.
The council declared a weather emergency and opened the downtown warming center Wednesday, despite the temperature not hitting 32 degrees (it rained that night, but the temperature only fell to 48 degrees). The city also opened the City Hall Parking Garage downtown Thursday for homeless to safely sleep in their cars. The safe parking lot, an idea the council had been talking about for a year and a half, allows homeless to sleep safely in their vehicles, with security guards and access to the garage’s bathrooms. The city also opened a second warming center Friday, at the Southside Park pool house.
The city also voted to give funding to nonprofits and churches to open warming centers across the city, and expanded a motel voucher program. By the end of the week, an outpouring of volunteers and nonprofits from across the city were offering their time and space.
Valenzuela, after shedding tears over Hunter’s death during a council meeting, took to Twitter, responding to a critic with a promise: “What happened last night won’t happen again.”
Steinberg said he wants “multiple sites” open nightly through the winter. City staff have not committed to that. A city news release said the warming center and parking garage will stay open through “the foreseeable future.”
But it’s possible the storm, combined with a few other other new significant factors, could serve as a wake-up call to cause the city to take actions to significantly reduce homelessness, said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. This winter brought new leadership to the council and the White House.
Valenzuela and Vang, both sworn in last month to the council, so far appear eager to address the crisis in new ways. On Wednesday, Valenzuela asked Chan if the city could use Sacramento State dorms and Golden 1 Center to shelter the homeless this winter.
Vang asked about the downtown Memorial Auditorium and Convention Center — soon to be among the city’s shiniest downtown facilities and the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in public money. Chan said the city is considering those options and others.
City officials are also exploring whether they can open many more hotels for the homeless and get reimbursed from the federal government, under an executive order President Joe Biden signed last week. The order, which could result in an unprecedented amount of federal money for homelessness, mentions the possibility of reimbursing cities for opening “non-congregate shelters” during the coronavirus pandemic through September. If it all works out, it could be a “game changer,” Valenzuela said.
Under Steinberg, tapped by Gov. Gavin Newsom to be a leader on the issue statewide, the city has done far more for the homeless than ever before. But critics say he’s let perfect be the enemy of good.
Under his leadership, the council has been focused on opening congregate shelters with a full menu of services, such as mental health, medical, workforce training and rehousing. But those shelters are expensive and slow to open. Since 2018, the city has spent roughly $35 million on four service-rich shelters, totaling less than 600 beds. Only one, with 50 beds, is currently open. Like all shelters in Sacramento, it’s typically full.
Those shelters are also “referral only,” meaning homeless individuals are not able to walk up to the doors and get in. That’s also the case for Project Roomkey motels, motel vouchers and affordable housing. The only choices for many on the streets are to hope a homeless “navigator” finds them and helps them get inside, or to wait on the phone for hours.
“The system is broken,” Sanchez said. “Imagine — no charge on your phone, holding forever to be told to call like 10 other places.”
Three hotel shelters also opened temporarily under the state’s Project Roomkey program, along with motel vouchers and scattered-site homes. But nearly 6,000 people are homeless in Sacramento on any given night — a two-year old estimate that has likely increased.
In 2019, a record 136 homeless people died on the streets — about one person every two and a half days. That does not count those who died in hospitals. Still, until this December, the city had not opened a warming center since the winter of 2016-17. The county has never opened one.
As winter turns to spring
Local leaders need to handle the homeless crisis like a natural disaster, Sanchez says — using public buildings to move thousands of people indoors as quickly as possible and giving them the basics they need for survival.
“I keep reminding them: what would we do if Sacramento burned like Paradise?” Sanchez said.
The county, which receives the vast majority of funding and staff for human services such as homelessness, does not have plans to open a warming center facility this winter, Haynes said. This week, prompted by the storm, the county handed out 29 weather-related motel vouchers. But like most vouchers, including Hunter’s, they only last for a few days or weeks. They are set to expire Wednesday. The temperatures that night are forecast to drop into the 30s.
“It should be a requirement on all of us at the local, state and federal level to create enough warming centers, shelters, tiny homes and affordable housing to provide everyone with a warm, safe place to be every night,” Steinberg said in a statement Saturday. “I’m hopeful that this week’s events will prompt our City to act with a greater sense of urgency going forward.”
“I hope it is a wake-up call that lasts and doesn’t fade as winter turns to spring,” Erlenbusch said. “Now it is time for the county to wake up and act with the same sense of urgency.”
While Sanchez is happy to see progress, she is far from claiming victory.
“The one good thing is the community is pulling together and the narrative is changing,” Sanchez said. “I want to believe them. But actions speak louder than words.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
