Is Kevin McCarty meeting his promises on homelessness as Sacramento mayor?
Mayor Kevin McCarty’s actions and approach to addressing homelessness have been different than his campaign rhetoric on the issue.
Prior to his November election, McCarty repeatedly discussed his support for the low-cost solution of opening more self-governed Safe Grounds — like the former Camp Resolution site — where unhoused people are allowed to camp on designated public land. McCarty expressed a desire to keep focused on addressing the homelessness crisis by including discussion of potential Safe Ground locations at every City Council meeting.
About two months before the November mayoral runoff election, the city closed Camp Resolution. The city cited fire code violations as a reason for dismantling the camp, as well as other alleged lease violations. The relationship between camp residents, the nonprofit leaseholder and the city had deteriorated in the preceding months. The city’s blog called the camp a “failed experiment” in a Aug. 26 post.
In the three and a half months since McCarty was sworn into office, he has not placed an item on a council agenda to open a new homeless shelter — Safe Ground or otherwise. McCarty estimated that only a third of council meetings under his mayoral tenure have included discussion of the homeless crisis.
McCarty said this week that Camp Resolution’s issues changed his feelings on Safe Grounds. Instead of opening new shelters on public land, he wants to focus on what he calls more viable options like adding beds to the city’s existing shelters.
“It’s which of these options do we have for people that are homeless: Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C,” McCarty said Tuesday. “So I’m more on plans B through C, and maybe less on Plan A. So we’re still trying to support opening more locations, but the Safe Ground (option) doesn’t seem like a viable option.”
Candidate vs. mayoral positions
McCarty made a number of positive references to Safe Grounds in his runoff against opponent Flojaune Cofer.
“We need to have locations like Camp Resolution,” McCarty told Fox40 during an interview in April 2024. “I was a big supporter of these Safe Ground sites. I actually like this model where it’s kind of self governed ... Too often I think we look for the perfect solutions the expensive solutions. I want to use places like Cal Expo, Caltrans land, old city corp yards and open up Safe Ground places where people can go”
During a forum about five weeks before he won the election, by which time the city had shut down Camp Resolution Safe Ground, McCarty again proposed Safe Grounds.
“What I wanna do every Tuesday night is agendize the issue of where are our Safe Ground shelters?” McCarty said during a Sept. 22 forum. “Where are these locations throughout the city of Sacramento?”
McCarty on Friday criticized Safe Grounds instead of praised them.
“There probably are 10% of the people of Sacramento says, ‘fine, you should just open up Cal Expo or whatever to have people just show up there, just camp and be self governed, but that’s just been an absolute disaster,” McCarty said. “It just preys upon people, it’s not successful, not great outcomes and just has a negative impact on the surrounding areas.”
“My hot take is that it’s so hard to get these up and running, so let’s maximize the ones we already have opened,” McCarty added.
Funding more shelter beds
Adding shelter beds is more expensive than Safe Grounds however. Camp Resolution was essentially free to the city, aside from trash pickup. By contrast, adding 100 spaces, along with increased services, to the city’s Roseville Road shelter, which McCarty calls the model for the city to follow, will cost about $12 million in state grant funds, according to an October city blog post.
The city’s growing deficit combined with decreased state grant funds makes finding money to add shelter beds even more challenging. From 2023 to 2024, the city added 15 beds to its inventory. That brought its total to 1,375 shelter beds. But according to the latest federally-mandated count, an additional estimated 3,053 people are living outdoors and not in a shelter.
To find money for new shelter beds, McCarty would like the city to explore selling the 102 acres in Meadowview it bought for $12.3 million in 2022, he said. Former Mayor Darrell Steinberg had announced plans to build a youth sports complex on a portion of the land. Over three years after the purchase, the city has built nothing there, which largely lacks roadways and infrastructure.
“I think you can sell it to a developer and still achieve what the community would like, with their housing and open space,” McCarty said Friday.
Advocate accuses mayor of a ‘flip-flop’
Sacramento Homeless Union President Crystal Sanchez said McCarty should restore his support for self-governed Safe Grounds on public land — owned by entities like the city, Caltrans, and Cal Expo, as he said on the campaign trail in April 2024.
“These spaces create stable locations where case managers can reliably connect with clients, eliminating the need for expensive facilities and third-party nonprofits,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said McCarty’s change from supporting to opposing Safe Grounds on public land is a “flip-flop.”
“This kind of uninformed policy reversal demonstrates exactly why unhoused communities struggle to trust local politicians,” Sanchez said. “You can’t claim to understand the outcomes of a program you’ve never bothered to visit or engage with directly. McCarty’s contradictory statements, made without any actual experience at Camp Resolution, represent precisely the type of disconnected political posturing that hinders real progress on addressing homelessness in Sacramento.”
McCarty said his change in positions is not a “flip-flop.”
While he is no longer focused on opening Safe Grounds on city land he said if someone wanted to open a Safe Ground on private land, he “wouldn’t be opposed.”
Attorney Mark Merin, who led the nonprofit that held the lease for Camp Resolution, has a Safe Ground on a lot he owns near 12th and C streets. It’s much smaller than Camp Resolution was.
McCarty plans to place a hearing about the city’s response to homelessness on the April 29 council agenda, he said. Staff will give updates on the number of homeless people in the city, programs designed to help, and what can be done differently. McCarty also hopes to further discuss Camp Resolution.
“I do think it’s worth discussing what happened (with Camp Resolution) — good and bad, and what viable options could exist economically and operationally for Safe Ground and safe parking type of locations,” McCarty said in a statement. “This and many other questions and options will undoubtedly be probed April 29.”
But after the April 29 meeting, McCarty said he expected more conversations on homelessness “on a regular basis.”
“The 29th could be the first of many,” McCarty said.
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 3:46 PM.
