How has homelessness worsened since COVID-19? Sacramento carries out first count since 2019
Sacramento streets were uncharacteristically empty Wednesday night as a group of bundled-up volunteers went looking for unhoused people downtown.
They were just six of more than 700 canvassers who signed up to survey unhoused people for the county’s point-in-time count, a federally mandated census that puts a rough number on the scope of the housing crisis nationwide.
Before temperatures dipped under 30 degrees, the county had been handing out hotel vouchers to get unhoused people out of the cold. That night, for much of the volunteers’ walk past the jail, the Golden 1 Center and into Old Sacramento, the small group found few homeless people to count, a sign that many had gotten the vouchers and chosen to go inside.
But the people who stayed out in the cold — those who were missed by the voucher sweeps, or who didn’t trust the offer — illustrated gaps in services.
“I almost froze to death last night,” said Paul, who declined to provide his last name as he huddled in the van where he sleeps. “I woke up; I was so cold, and I couldn’t feel nothing.”
The survey was the first comprehensive effort to count unhoused people since the coronavirus pandemic, and will be the first to in part assess just how devastating its financial impact was for Sacramento residents. People who spent the cold night in shelters or in hotels using vouchers will be counted in the tally in addition to the people surveyors interviewed.
In 2019 during the last census, an estimated 5,570 residents were living in homelessness on any given night countywide — then the highest ever recorded number of people living without permanent housing.
But as many as 10,000 people may now be unhoused today based on estimates of how encampments have grown over the past three years, according to Arturo Baiocchi, a Sacramento State professor who leads the census research efforts.
Even as the city and county have poured tens of millions dollars into addressing homelessness, the crisis remains untenable. Last month, Sacramento County allocated $59 million of its most recent federal COVID-19 relief funding to homelessness and housing.
And last summer, the Sacramento City Council approved a $100 million homeless siting plan with 20 new sites for Safe Grounds, shelters and tiny homes. None of the 20 sites has since opened, though the city has opened motels and also a Safe Ground site at Miller Park, which was not in original plan.
Unstably housed Californians who agreed to answer questions for the survey spoke of road blocks and disappointment in the state capital.
Paul agreed to take part in the 10-minute survey and state housing official Sasha Kergan leaned through the window of the car where he sat with his girlfriend going through a checklist of questions in the official point-in-time app on her smartphone: How long have you been homeless? What was your last zipcode, if you remember? Where are you sleeping tonight? Each of them received a $10 Subway gift card.
The couple has spent months waiting for permanent housing. Brittany, who also declined to provide her last name, has a hotel voucher. The hotel informed Paul that he isn’t allowed inside, so she was sitting with him in the car, eating and smoking cigarettes and chatting about their kitten, Princess Cleo.
Brittany said her social worker recently led them to believe they were on the cusp of getting an apartment, only to inform them that a filing mistake meant they’d have to start the long process all over again.
“It’s just frustrating,” Brittany said, her long hair falling around her face.
Directions to shelters
Meanwhile, in Del Paso Heights, a group of four volunteers made their way through the neighborhood’s mixed terrain — residential streets, industrial blocks buzzing with overnight freights, a secluded creek along I-80.
Volunteers found Joshwa Garrison outside a Dollar General, leaning against his wheelchair, a half-eaten cinnamon Pop-Tart perched on top of a plaid blanket on the seat.
Garrison, 45, has been homeless almost four years, he told volunteers, as his pet chihuahua Jazzper piped up near his feet. Yesterday, he slept on the street, and that night he would do the same.
Before the volunteers left, he stopped them.
“Do you have any hotel vouchers?”
Kathy Randles, a volunteer, hesitated.
“We don’t have any hotel vouchers,” she said. “Have you called 211 to ask about any vouchers tonight? There are warming shelters open tonight.”
A volunteer scrawled a list of warming centers and shelters onto scrap paper and handed it to Garrison. Union Gospel might have been his best bet, but it was at least five miles away.
Garrison thanked the volunteers as they headed down their survey route. He then shook his head, fed up with the lack of shelters, hotel vouchers and housing.
“I’ve applied for everything, and I never get a call back,” Garrison said.
Newly homeless after job loss
Next, volunteers walked up to three tents neatly organized behind a Home Depot, which housed five residents. A sign that read “Don’t just count your blessings, share them” in glittery letters hung on a tree in front.
Ted Weston, 25, became homeless a month ago when he lost his job. Weston, who grew up in Del Paso Heights, said these days he’s been making money cutting hair, enough to buy food and keep busy.
Sacramento needs to provide more emergency shelter to unhoused residents, Weston said, particularly for people like him who suddenly slip into homelessness. Still, he is determined to find stable housing soon.
“It ain’t gonna be like this for long,” Weston said. “I got plans to get my stuff together.”
‘They look at you differently’
Near another I-80 on-ramp in the city center, Kergan approached Michael Castillo as he trudged under a copse of redwoods. Castillo, 54, swtiched on his headlamp when he noticed a reporter scribbling notes in the dark.
He said he had lost his job and been homeless for a few weeks in Chico before he caught an Amtrak to Sacramento. In Sacramento, his wallet was stolen, and he couldn’t scrape together the $26 or so he needed for a train or bus ticket to his hometown in Fresno, where his mother lives.
“I’m trying to get home,” he said. His mother has dementia, he said. “She’s my best friend; she needs me now.”
He had set up his tent in a somewhat isolated area by the freeway. Surveyors only noticed him because he was walking away from his shelter. He set up camp by a section of a small park from which he painstakingly removed all the trash.
Castillo was wearing a yellow reflective jacket because he wants people to think he’s a laborer and not a homeless person. When people can tell, he said, “They look at you differently. You can kind of see it in their face. It hurts.”
Kergan handed him a $10 Subway gift card to thank him for participating in the survey, the last gift card this downtown team had left. She also gave him a little piece of paper with information about calling 211 to inquire about the Return to Residency program, which provides newly arrived homeless people with a bus ticket back home.
“Thank you,” he said. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”
