What are Sacramento County residents most worried about? This is what they said
A vast majority of Sacramento County residents think homelessness and the high cost of housing are the biggest issues in the region, a recent survey of 1,061 people found.
Two in five of these randomly contacted people — all of whom live at a permanent address within the county — had either been homeless themselves or had a friend or family member who experienced homelessness.
In a unanimous vote Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors accepted a formal set of 2024-25 budget priorities informed by the survey. Homelessness and fixing bad roads are the two main priorities for “new or enhanced” program funding in the coming fiscal year.
Supervisors set the budget for the services the county provides — namely, health and human services for all county residents and additional services in unincorporated areas, such as road maintenance and law enforcement via the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office. In the current fiscal year, the county allocated $8.8 billion in spending.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, the supervisors heard a presentation on the opinion survey by David Metz, president of FM3 Research. FM3’s survey asked an open-ended question: “In a few words of your own, what is the most important problem you would like to see Sacramento County government address?”
Homelessness, Metz said, was “far and away the top concern.”
In total, 58% of people said “homelessness” was the most pressing problem in the county. The second-most popular issues were crime, safety and drugs, with 18% of those surveyed weighing in in one of the categories. Housing, affordable housing and the cost of rent came in third place, with 15% of those who answered the survey.
Nearly all 1,061 surveyed — 95% — said homelessness was an extremely serious or very serious problem. For the cost of housing, that number was 83%.
That virtually universal agreement on the seriousness of homelessness stood out to Metz.
“In most times, you just don’t have the intensity and breadth of concern that you see there,” he said. “That is really unusual.”
Regarding homelessness prevention, 85% of people said they were dissatisfied with the county’s work.
How should the county allocate its spending? Looking broadly, respondents said they would hypothetically spend 22.5% of the budget on homelessness; 19.2% of funding would then go toward law enforcement and public safety.
That split is not reflected in the current county budget. When the supervisors passed the 2023-24 budget in June, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office got $695.3 million — more than 13 times the size of the budget given to the Department of Homeless Services and Housing.
Additionally, in the last fiscal year, the county spent 45% of its homeless budget on temporary shelters, and only 1% on programs that officials classified as preventive.
Although its budget directs more money to emergency response than to prevention, the county has acknowledged that for every one person who exits homelessness in Sacramento County, three more people become homeless.
Just over half of the people surveyed by FM3 believe that Sacramento County is “on the wrong track.” However, most people who had knowingly interacted with county services — seven in 10 — said they were satisfied with the level of customer service.
People were also highly satisfied with many specific county services. Trash services, libraries and county parks were all beloved by a sizable majority — between 75% and 81% — of people who used them.
Interviews for the survey occurred between Oct. 20 and Nov. 1. The survey was offered in 10 languages and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
