This Sacramento-area city is paying homeless people to clean up camps — and it’s paying off

For nearly a year, Elk Grove has been implementing a program that pays homeless residents to clean up encampments, a move initially meant to maintain social distancing but which now may see more permanent adoption.

Sarah Bontrager, the city’s Housing and Public Services manager, said the program was borne of a conversation she had with an Elk Grove police sergeant, now a lieutenant, who told her that something had to be done to curb public complaints about accumulating garbage at homeless encampments while still building relationships in the community.

When the coronavirus pandemic swept through the nation in early 2020, social distancing became a primary concern for nearly every sector of society. For both police officers working in and around encampments, and for the people who lived in them, close contact came with obvious risks of COVID-19 transmission.

The usual routine to clean up camps, after receiving public complaints, was to notify the people living there that a cleanup would be coming soon. Then, officers and public services employees would head out and remove any trash and waste in the area.

It was an expensive process, according to Bontrager. She estimated that any one cleanup, an hours-long process, could cost $1,000 or more in staffing. Over the course of any given month, the city would often spend $10,000 on cleanups alone, she said.

The solution? Rather than risk public health by having officers, staff and residents in close proximity for such a long period of time, Bontrager and others decided it would be easier and safer to offer incentives to the residents of the camps to clean up themselves.

Since July, homeless residents of Elk Grove have been paid in grocery store gift cards of up to $20 every two weeks for bagging up their trash and having it ready for officers to collect when they come by for a cleanup. The gift cards can’t buy alcohol or cigarettes, and most recipients have bought hygiene products or food that can’t be found through donations or at food banks, Bontrager said.

The program so far has been “very successful” by Bontrager’s measure.

“We were really surprised that we got excellent compliance,” she said. “It’s really improved our outreach team’s ability to connect with people ... it’s helped us to build trust.”

Another benefit of the program is that it’s much more cost effective. Bontrager said the city has spent less than $10,000 in total since handing out the first payment in July — less than what a normal month might cost in cleanups before the program rolled out.

Elk Grove police homeless outreach officer Jennifer McCue said that residents have responded very well to the program. When officers show up at a camp for a cleanup, the residents are already waiting with their bags full of trash.

“That’s been very positive,” McCue said. “It’s really cleaned everything up.”

After early testing and having seen the results, Bontrager said city officials are considering making the program a more permanent fixture. The program has been paid for by Cares Act funding, but in the future, if it were adopted permanently, funding would come out of the city budget.