A day after Sacramento County DA files lawsuit, city sweeps homeless encampment
There was heartbreak, pain and frustration on all sides Wednesday after Sacramento police removed about two dozen people living in a homeless encampment near Broadway in Upper Land Park.
The sweep happened one day after Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho filed a lawsuit blasting the city of Sacramento for its “descent into decay” in handling its sprawling homeless crisis.
Following the sweep, the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement, “we are supportive of enforcement and compliance actions that are responsive to the public safety concerns of the community.”
The city’s action, however, was not a direct response to the lawsuit.
The Sacramento Bee has been talking to residents of the encampment for weeks after a major fire Aug. 24 — the 14th to hit the former California Shellfish Co. — choked the neighborhood with smoke while the people living in the adjacent encampment watched flames and the firefighting effort from their tents.
Determining that the building was structurally unsafe after its roof collapsed, the city’s Dangerous Buildings Department ordered it demolished, leaving behind a pile of rubble.
The Bee learned that the city had planned for Wednesday to be the day to evict residents from the encampment that included makeshift tents, a camper with a washing machine powered by a generator and an outdoor shower. Residents tapped into a hose at the nearby Alder Grove public housing project for water.
Residents of the encampment said they had been living there for more than a year and a half.
“The city’s Department of Community Response has performed extensive outreach at this site over the past six weeks,” said city spokesperson Tim Swanson, “visiting it nearly a dozen times to engage with people and offer services.”
Swanson said everyone at the encampment had been offered a spot at a city-sanctioned homeless campsite at nearby Miller Park, which have portable restrooms and a security fence.
“No offer has been accepted at this time, “ Swanson said Wednesday afternoon.
As police and tow trucks arrived in the morning, members of the encampment mourned what they said had become a community populated by a majority of women who looked out for each other.
Gracie Parsley, who was waiting to have her trailer towed by a friend, said she had no plans to go to Miller Park. Parsley, who worked for nine years as a workers compensation specialist at an insurance company before a disability issue caused her to become homeless, spent a year at Miller Park. She said she grew frustrated waiting for housing that never came.
Wearing a black jumpsuit and a purple bandana, Parsley said, “the city gets all this money to deal with homelessness. How are they spending it?”
Ted Bullock, a Navy veteran, came to help a friend move, despite being hobbled by a hip replacement. “People don’t understand how decent most of these people are,” he said. “Now they have to reestablish themselves again.”
But other residents of the neighborhood, while expressing compassion for the homeless, said that the spate of fires, prostitution and drug use by some in the encampment was blighting an already challenged neighborhood. Many said it was time for the encampment to go.
A landlord in the neighborhood said the encampment has had devastating consequences.
“I literally contacted the city over a hundred times just begging for someone to pay attention,” said Lee Archie.
Archie said he had invested in the Upper Land Park neighborhood 15 years ago, buying two buildings across the street from the boarded-up shellfish building.
“We’ve done everything we can to build this area up,” he said. “There is so much potential here.”
Archie said the fires and unsanitary encampment upset his tenants. In the last several months, two businesses, Nucleus Pump Services and A1 Towing, gave notice to leave their commercial spaces.
“That represents dozens of jobs just gone,” said Archie, who supports the D.A.’s lawsuit.
Archie added, “of course, I care about the homeless. We have fed them through our church, through our ministry. We have done all that is possible to try to help. But this is not the proper way. We are not helping them this way.”
The fire that led to the shellfish building being torn down in August was not the first fire to severely damage the building. A fire in early June at was set by arson, according to Capt. Justin Sylvia, a spokesman for the Sacramento Fire Department.
Sylvia confirmed that Dennis Stagg, who has “been known to experience homelessness” was arrested Aug. 28 and charged with intentionally setting the June fire. Sylvia said that the fire as the building was being remediated for asbestos after the hazardous materials became exposed from previous fires.
Sylvia said firefighters had been called to the building for flames 14 times in the past two years.
The revelations that asbestos was present during those past fires worried Derek Welch, a resident of the Mill, a recent development one block from the former shellfish building.
“But what about during the previous fires?” Welch asked. “The aftermath, who knows, we may not get the full repercussions for another 20 years.”
As the sweep wound down Wednesday, Archie became upset when several camping trailers were towed from the vacant lot to the street near his buildings.
“This is no way to solve the problem,” Archie said.
The city plans a neighborhood meeting Monday to talk about addressing homelessness and community needs in the Upper Land Park neighborhood, according to several residents.
Archie plans to attend. So, too, does writer Sasha Abramsky, another resident of the Mill.
“I want to learn how the city plans to humanely address homelessness,” Abramsky said, “and to secure the neighborhood.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A day after Sacramento County DA files lawsuit, city sweeps homeless encampment."
