How far left will Sacramento go? Election puts homeless activist against neighborhood advocate
The race for one of three open seats on the Sacramento City Council pits a self-described progressive homeless activist against a neighborhood advocate who got involved in local government by pushing for better crosswalks.
Caity Maple, cofounder of a group that delivers basic necessities to homeless people, and Tamiko Heim, the neighborhood advocate, are competing for the District 5 seat held for the past 12 years by Councilman Jay Schenirer.
The district looks different from the one that elected Schenirer three times because of the city’s once-a-decade redrawing of political boundaries. It now has Oak Park, Hollywood Park and a stretch of south Sacramento. It no longer includes Curtis Park.
Maple has a head start. She’s been campaigning for the race since 2020 and has raised about $65,000. Her blue and yellow maple leaf yard signs dot Oak Park yards and businesses.
Heim jumped in the race in February, after the redistricting process determined her home was still in the district. That gave her just four months to prepare for the June 7 election.
She has raised far less money so far, about $34,000, but has big name supporters in Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Schenirer, as well as former Councilman Steve Hansen.
Heim, 42, a planning manager at the Department of Motor Vehicles, bought a house in South Sacramento’s North City Farms neighborhood in 2018. She started the North City Farms Neighborhood Association and won a fight to get a crosswalk installed near Curtis Park. Schenirer then appointed her to the Active Transportation Commission. She’s also a longtime volunteer with the Black Child Legacy Campaign, which works to prevent deaths of Black children in Sacramento.
Maple, 30, rented in midtown and Curtis Park for about a decade before buying a house in North Oak Park in 2020. She was a state lobbyist for the pot industry before becoming vice president of government affairs for Perfect Union, a Sacramento cannabis company. She left that job in December to start her own political consulting firm.
Maple calls herself progressive, but stops short of calling herself a Democratic socialist like Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, by whom she is endorsed. Maple is also endorsed by Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, as well as the Democratic Party of Sacramento and the Central Labor Council.
Differing views on campaign donations
Maple has pledged not to accept law enforcement union money, following a local movement Valenzuela and Councilwoman Mai Vang started after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
“I’m not anti-police, I just want to make sure the department is working for everyone including areas that are over-policed,” Maple said. “I will keep an open door to talk with law enforcement, to talk with the community, but I want my community members to know I have their interests at heart so they can count on me to be unbiased.”
Heim this month accepted $6,000 from the Sacramento Police Officers Association, the union that represents city cops. As a Black woman, she says she is very aware of police brutality and racial profiling. For example, police once pulled her over for not having a small light above her license plate, she said.
But she relates to law enforcement officers, too. Her father is a retired corrections officer and her aunt is a retired Sacramento County deputy sheriff. After careful consideration, she decided to accept police union donations, partly because “campaigns are expensive.”
“The reality is I live in two worlds,” Heim said. “I live in a world where police are needed and I also live in a world where police do harm to bodies that look like me. The best way for me is to be a partner with the community and bridge that gap to the police. To say, ‘this is what we need from you.’”
Sacramento Police Department funding hit an all-time-high $165.8 million in the budget that started July 1. Valenzuela has tried to reduce the police budget, but has been outvoted.
Heim is not in favor of reducing the police budget, she said. She is unsure how she would feel about increasing it.
Maple said she is definitely against the police budget continuing to grow, but is unsure whether she wants to cut it.
Maple has also pledged not to accept donations from large real estate and development companies, as well as landlord groups. She wants to beef up the city’s tenant protection program, and supported a failed ballot measure in 2020 that would have done so.
“It’s not that I don’t think large development is good, I just want to be unbiased,” Maple said. “If a large project in my district comes before me and the developer had given me money during my campaign, I can see why the community might be suspect of any decisions I make on that. I’m not taking from landlord groups or realtor groups for the same reasons. The vast majority of the people in my district are renters, so they need to see I have their backs, too.”
Heim accepted $6,000 from the California Real Estate PAC, $6,000 from the California Apartment Association, $6,000 from the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, $1,800 from developer Mark Friedman, $1,800 from Sotiris Kolokotronis, and $1,800 from CFY Development Inc. She said she does not remember how she voted on the 2020 measure for stricter rent control, but would be open to discussing ways to make the existing ordinance better for tenants, despite accepting developer money, she said.
“I’m always open,” Heim said. “Just because I took some money from someone does not mean they own me. I am from Sacramento. I am always going to be about Sacramento.”
Similar views on homelessness
On the topic of homelessness, frequently cited as the most pressing issue facing the city, Maple and Heim have seemingly similar views.
Both are open to different types of shelters city leaders have opened — large congregate shelters, Safe Ground sanctioned encampments, tiny homes and motel shelters. If elected, both would be open to pushing to open a safe parking site at the Florin Road light rail station, which the council approved as part of a $100 million siting plan in August, but has yet to open.
Maple is a co-founder of the nonprofit Sacramento Solidarity of Unhoused People (SOUP). The group, which started when the coronavirus pandemic struck, has now has grown to more than 400 volunteers who span across the city to provide food, water, clothing and other survival items.
She believes in the “housing first” model, which places people in permanent housing units first, then works on getting them mental health or substance use services.. She wants the city to start buying single-family houses and renting out rooms for about $600 each, modeled after a program in the Bay Area. That monthly rent would be enough for an unhoused person to afford it on a Social Security check, for example, but lower than the $1,100 it costs to rent the typical market-rate studio apartment in Sacramento.
“Instead of othering people and putting them in a place outside the neighborhood, we’d be ingraining them in the community, giving them that sense of belonging,” said Maple, who lived in her car for a few months while attending American River College.
Heim also wants to spread the homeless shelters throughout the city, she said. Steinberg in 2018 called on all eight council districts to open 100-bed homeless shelters. That still has not happened, but Schenirer answered the call for District 5. A large 100-bed shelter is open at Alhambra Boulevard and X Street.
“We need to share the love with all the districts,” Heim said. “It can’t be 10 sites in D5.”
While the city provides services such as mental health, medical, rehousing, and help getting identification cards to shelter guests, all shelters are typically full on any given night. Heim wants the city to launch pop ups to provide those services at the city’s large camps, she said.
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
