Sacramento might bar homeless from sleeping at City Hall during day, allow them at night

Sacramento could soon rewrite a city ordinance to start allowing homeless people to sleep outside City Hall overnight. But people wouldn’t be allowed to sleep there during the day.

The City Council’s Law and Legislation Committee will discuss changing the ordinance during a meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. The meeting will be open to the public and public comments will be accepted, City Clerk Mindy Cuppy said.

The ordinance currently prohibits people from being on City Hall grounds from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. unless attending a city hearing or meeting but allows them to be there during the day.

Police used the ordinance to order homeless people to move from City Hall’s overhangs during a severe rainstorm in mid-January — an incident for which Mayor Darrell Steinberg publicly apologized during a council meeting Jan. 22.

The next two nights, officers continued to tell people to move, then stopped enforcing the ordinance Jan. 25, police spokesman Sgt. Vance Chandler previously told the Bee.

The proposed change would not allow people to sit or lie down from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, a city staff report said. People would be allowed to sit or lie on benches or chairs supplied by the city, the proposal said. The benches and chairs are planted outside the overhangs. People who are part of an authorized City Hall plaza event would also be exempt, the proposal said.

Assistant City Manager Christopher Conlin, who is recommending the change, said the new language would let people seek shelter overnight while still allowing city employees to get in the doors and allowing people to use the plaza for events.

“We wanted to make sure the public and staff still had good access, but after hours, it didn’t make sense for us to be imposing those restrictions,” Conlin said. “As someone put it here, it’s a compassionate compromise.”

Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said the change would be a step in the right direction but homeless people should be allowed to sleep at City Hall at all times of the day.

“Homeless people have nowhere to go, so they should be allowed to sleep there 24/7,” Erlenbusch said. “(That area) is lit and it provides protection from the elements.”