Sacramento church has fed homeless for 7 years. Then deputies gave them trespass notices
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office deputies issued a “notice of trespass” to seniors handing out food to homeless people in Arden Arcade Wednesday.
The seniors, volunteers from St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, were giving food and survival gear to homeless people Wednesday afternoon. They were set up in the parking lot of the Arcade Library, off Marconi Avenue, as they have been for about seven years, said volunteer Jan Dell, 75.
However, the notice of trespass, which deputies issued to Dell and three other volunteers, lists the location as the adjacent strip mall along Fulton Avenue as the address where the trespassing was taking place, not the library.
Dell’s photos, shared with The Sacramento Bee, show the volunteers and their Mercy Pedalers pickup truck set up the parking lot of the library, not the strip mall. It shows several deputies standing outside their vehicles parked, with the library’s slanted light blue roof behind them.
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Amar Gandhi declined comment.
County spokeswoman Janna Haynes declined comment because she said the county’s homeless services and housing department is unaware of the incident, which was handled by Sheriff’s Office deputies.
The library did not give formal permission to the volunteers to be there, but also had not called the deputies to remove them, said library spokeswoman Lisa Martinez. The notice listed Sacramento Protective Services, a private security company, as the entity associated with the notice, which is not the security company the library uses, Martinez said.
Is this tied to county’s latest camping bans?
Howard Lawrence of Sacramento Area Congregations Together believes the action was tied to the Board of Supervisors vote last week to ban camping on public property.
That action, approved unanimously, adds an amendment to a September 2022 ordinance that banned camping along the American River Parkway and near so-called critical infrastructure. The new ordinance extends the ban to all public property in the unincorporated county. It also broadens the definition of a “camp facility” to include not just huts and tents, but also vehicles and trailers. The ordinance allows deputies and park rangers to issue criminal misdemeanors to people after giving a warning.
Now, the group, associated with the cyclist outreach group Mercy Pedalers, has to find a new location to weekly serve the roughly 20 homeless people with the items donated by the congregation, Dell said.
“The situation is desperate because there is no shelter and no housing,” Dell said, noting the city has a shelter wait list of more than 2,300. “We’re trying to at least give first aid, hygiene, a small meal, sleeping bags, tarps and tents out to them. It upset the homeless too because they feel so hated already. How much money did it cost to send all those people out? They treated us like we were criminals.”
Dell said the deputies used their vehicles to block in the volunteers’ vehicles so they could not get out without being given the written trespass notices.
“They said if we came back we would be arrested,” Dell said.
Supervisor Patrick Kennedy said he was “definitely concerned” about the incident but wanted his staff to look into it before commenting further.
This story was originally published November 14, 2024 at 2:54 PM.
