Sacramento County paid consulting firm $75K for role in homeless meeting, prep
Sacramento County is paying a consulting firm up to $74,800 to help elected officials figure out how to reorganize the way they respond to the homelessness crisis.
A big part of the job, tied to nearly $24,000 of the contract, was facilitating a two-hour discussion and expert presentation during a Tuesday meeting among 19 elected officials from the county and its cities. The remainder of the $74,800 involved preparation ahead of the meeting and planned follow-up briefings with local leaders later this year.
Deputy County Executive for Social Services Chevon Kothari hired Sacramento-based Mosaic Solutions and Advocacy, said Janna Haynes, a county spokeswoman. Kothari has authority to sign contracts up to $175,000 without approval from the elected Board of Supervisors.
Niki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said the county should have instead used the money on rental assistance to help get homeless people off the streets.
”Money is always better spent directly improving people’s lives,” said Jones. “The county employs multiple people with six-figure salaries who should be able to think systemically, collaboratively create an agenda, and facilitate a meeting.”
If the county had used the $74,800 on rental subsidies of $500 a month, it could have covered a dozen people for a year.
Kothari said the eventual plan that will come from the meeting will help more people than that.
“While I understand the community sentiment might be that every dollar goes to rental assistance, this amount of money wouldn’t go as far for rental assistance as it can go getting a regional governance and plan in place that will impact more people, for a longer term,” Kothari said in a statement.
The county does have $7.6 million in its current budget for a variety of rental assistance programs, which will help between 400 and 500 families this fiscal year, Haynes has said.
Darby Kernan and Matt Cate, both partners at Mosaic Solutions and Advocacy, facilitated two hours of discussion at the meeting Tuesday.
In addition to that, according to the no-bid contract, the $74,800 also paid for the consultants to:
- Meet with stakeholders, staff and 19 elected officials who represent the county and the cities within it.
- Review the Homeless Services Partnership Agreement City of Sacramento and County of Sacramento, signed in 2022.
- Review and give feedback on draft reports and talking points.
- Write a two- to three-page summary document to show outcomes and recommendations for next steps, due next month.
The contract also included travel expenses for Alex Visotzky of the National Alliance to End Homelessness to travel to Sacramento to present, which will be less than $500, Haynes said.
The county will pay the consultants in four separate payments as they complete various tasks, the contract said. The firm receives a payment of $23,800 for facilitating the meeting, including Visotzky’s involvement, and preparing a written meeting summary.
The contract was not competitively bid, “due to the specific nature of need, the accelerated timeline and the limited size on the contract,” Haynes said. The contract was agreed to in August for $68,000, then amended last Friday to a total of $74,800.
The meeting was held months after state Sen. Angelique Ashby proposed a controversial bill that would’ve overhauled how homeless and housing decisions are made in Sacramento. That bill has been on pause but could return in January.
The elected officials did not take a formal vote or action at Tuesday’s meeting, but county staff expect the board to pass direction at an upcoming meeting regarding “an updated governance structure” for homelessness, Haynes said.
Direct rental assistance
Although the typical rent for a Sacramento studio apartment is at least $1,200 a month, the last step for people before homelessness is often living with family or friends, not in a formally leased apartment, Dennis Culhane, a social scientist at University of Pennsylvania and longtime federal adviser on homelessness, has said.
Therefore, many family and friends would accept rental payments as low as $500 to let a person live in a room in their homes, according to the research of Culhane and others.
One 2023 UC San Francisco study found 70% of homeless people believed that a rental subsidy of just $300 to $500 a month would have prevented their homelessness for a sustained period.
Sacramento State social work professor Arturo Baiocchi said the public should hold their elected officials accountable to make sure the plan actually makes a real difference to the homeless.
“The challenge for policymakers is to make sure that spending on better coordination leads to direct, measurable benefits for the people it’s meant to serve.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2025 at 3:25 PM.
