What will the new American River Parkway plan do for homeless people besides move them around?
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a new plan last week to manage natural resources on the American River Parkway — a plan that the director of regional parks said would give the county more flexibility to move homeless people from one part of the parkway to another.
When asked what shuffling homeless people around will accomplish, Kentral Pierce, who’s lived on the parkway for 10 years and has been relocated multiple times, had a one-word answer:
“Nothing.”
As the number of visible encampments along the parkway has increased, the political will to act has also grown, with murky results. In August 2022, the Board of Supervisors formally banned camping along the American River Parkway and designated the area “critical infrastructure.” That ordinance did not require more housing or other services designed to offer people a more comfortable alternative.
At the Tuesday supervisors meeting, the board again displayed a sense of urgency about homeless encampments on the parkway as it discussed the Natural Resources Management Plan.
Department of Regional Parks Director Liz Bellas addressed the board and answered questions about the new plan, which prioritizes “elimination or mitigation of the detrimental consequences associated with homeless encampments.”
Supervisor Phil Serna, who represents District 1 which includes midtown, East Sacramento, North and South Natomas, Del Paso Heights and Oak Park, asked Bellas specifically about how homeless people would be handled under the plan.
“What will the adoption of this plan do to enhance our legal ability to more immediately address the impacts that we’re seeing?” he asked, referring to the consequences of homelessness. “How does this plan fit into the arsenal of tools that we have to compassionately take care of the parkway, of course, simultaneously looking after folks that deserve something other than a tent space on the parkway to shelter in?”
Hearing this question, Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Coalition to End Homelessness, said, “What I hear is, how can we get around the Martin v. Boise decision?”
In 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case that citing or moving homeless campers when there was no other place for them to go was a form of cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution.
“As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter,” the judges said. Between the city and the county, Sacramento County has about 7,000 more homeless people than it has shelter beds for them to sleep on, and an even worse shortage of stable, affordable housing.
But at the Board of Supervisors meeting, Bellas said the parkway plan would give the county more ability to cite or move homeless people.
“This document plus our environmental review document has stated, ‘This is something that needs to happen: We need to take care of our natural resources. We need to make sure that we are addressing the impacts of our encampments on the parkway,’” she said. “It could be used to help us defend any questions that might come up on why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Serna asked her specifically whether homeless people could be moved from a part of the parkway with “greater habitat value” to a different part of the parkway before, ultimately, moving them into a “more humane shelter situation.”
Bellas responded: “Absolutely.”
The plan explicitly raised the issue of the Martin v. Boise case, saying the ruling “prohibits the County from criminally prosecuting people who are sleeping, sitting, or lying outside on public property when those people have no home or shelter available.” The plan also includes “interpretation of the decision” from county counsel, which says that the case law does not mean that people can “indefinitely reside at a single location on public property,” suggesting that the county’s legal attorneys likely agree homeless people can be legally shuffled from one area of the parkway to another, at least under certain circumstances.
“From my perspective as a lawyer, I wouldn’t want to hang my hat on that,” said Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center, who also served as counsel in the Martin v. Boise case. “I’m sure they’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars with their lawyers coming up with a scheme, rather than actually complying with the spirit of Martin. They’re trying to find ways of doing what Martin says you shouldn’t do by slipping through a loophole.”
Tars said local politicians can choose to see Martin v. Boise as a constraint on the ability to criminalize homeless people or as an opportunity to marshal political will to create adequate housing. He pointed to Chico specifically.
In 2021, the Chico Enterprise-Record reported, a judge issued an injunction against the city of Chico, which tried to relocate homeless people to an old airport tarmac covered in gravel, with no shade and no running water in the blazing summer heat. The judge, Morrison C. England, Jr., said the tarmac was not an adequate alternative to the campsites the homeless people had set up in a park.
Ultimately, the city settled with the plaintiffs and designed an acceptable site with 177 individual tiny homes with electricity, heat and air conditioning.
Rulings after the Martin case, Tars said, have only served to underscore the court’s original decision. The court has clarified that any laws that criminalize or fine homeless people for “basic life-sustaining activity” are unacceptable.
Still, case law has not stopped park rangers from issuing camping-related citations to homeless people, said Pierce and Chamisa Bell, another parkway resident. Bell said she’s been cited for having a dog off-leash; park ranger logs show that people in the park get cited for offenses such as starting a campfire, having a shopping cart in the park, blocking a bike path or for tying a rope to a tree — often trying to hang laundry or prop up a tent.
It’s galling to Bell. “If we have to be out here,” she said, “we have to try to be comfortable out here.”
Bell said she has lived on the parkway for 11 years, and she’s been evicted from her campsite. Each time, she said she has had 48 hours to move all her things.
“You can only carry what you can carry,” she said. In her rush, she’s lost treasured possessions: An heirloom Bible; the obituaries she’d clipped for each of her parents.
“I’m so tired of being out here,” she said. She explained that her three beloved dogs have presented a hurdle to finding shelter — shelters and transitional housing sometimes won’t accept one animal, let alone three, and she can’t choose. To get off the parkway, she said, what she needs is “an address and a key.”
While Pierce thought moving homeless people from one part of the parkway to another would be pointless, Bell thought it served a purpose: “The only thing it’ll solve is them having the ability to know where everyone is.”
The new Natural Resources Management Plan does explicitly include a related objective: “Develop and maintain a tracking system for homeless encampments in the parkway.”
The Natural Resources Management Plan also contains a falsehood about homelessness in California. The report cites “the moderate winter temperatures that allow for long-term living outside” as a primary contributor to the homelessness crisis in California.
“It’s shocking that in the 21st century, that myth still exists,” said Erlenbusch. The temperatures don’t “allow for” living outside, Erlenbusch said: “Bad public policy” does.
New York City has colder winters but also has 65,000 sheltered homeless people, and, according to one estimate, around 10,000 unsheltered homeless people. For decades, the city has also had a “right to shelter.” Sacramento County, meanwhile, has at least 6,700 unsheltered homeless residents.
In 2021, at least eight people froze to death in Sacramento. In New York City, 19 people froze to death between July 2021 and July 2022 — the metropolis has harsher winters and a homeless population more than seven times greater than Sacramento County’s, but only saw twice as many homeless hypothermia deaths.
This story was originally published March 6, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
