Sacramento County to meet with region’s cities to address causes of homelessness
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- Sacramento County and seven cities will convene Oct. 28 to address homelessness.
- Officials hope to form a regional council for coordinated homelessness prevention.
- Meeting seeks to unify efforts, avoid disjointed responses and track shared outcomes.
Sacramento County elected officials will meet with the city of Sacramento and six other incorporated cities to discuss homelessness prevention efforts this fall in an attempt to address the root causes of homelessness regionally, collaborate on solutions and potentially create a homeless council.
The meeting, which will include 20 elected officials from the county, the cities of Sacramento, Elk Grove, Citrus Heights, Galt, Rancho Cordova, Folsom, and Isleton, will be held on Oct 28, county supervisors announced July 15. Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez said the group will seek to meet monthly.
This meeting will be the first time the city of Sacramento will have a joint discussion, Sacramento City Councilmember Eric Guerra told The Bee in April.
On July 22, Supervisor Pat Hume, during a board meeting, asked if the date could be moved up. Supervisor Phil Serna said the county and city have already “done a lot of work around making sure it’s going to work out immediately.”
“There’s been a lot of work done to get to that date, and I don’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole at this point,” Serna said.
More than 6,000 people are homeless in Sacramento County, according to the region’s most recent Point in Time count.
The meeting’s date was announced during a news conference when county supervisors spoke against the now-shelved Senate Bill 802, which proposed the creation of a regional housing and homelessness agency to take a more local approach to homelessness. The board, in an open letter, opposed the bill, recommending to “allow local jurisdictions to continue working toward a collaborative solution,” previous Bee reporting stated.
“I believe (the meeting’s) kind of format will have a much better outcome than to throw more government and more bureaucracy into the problem,” Rodriguez said. “The more government gets involved in things, the more bureaucratic issues you have, the more delays we have. And I think all of us can have a sense of urgency to tackle this issue and do something.”
Serna said the meeting is being coordinated with Gurerra’s office, Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and Rodriguez. He added that “nonprofit partners” will also be in attendance.
“We hope to birth a kind of new understanding,” Serna said. “Not just between the largest city and the county, but all of our municipal partners about roles and responsibilities, how we’re going to hold ourselves accountable, what metrics we want to use to determine success or the need for improvement.”
Rodriguez added that the county’s six incorporated cities will be included to prevent disconnect from the county’s homelessness prevention efforts. Hume said the goal of the meeting is to prevent “side deals” and “going off in their own directions” on how each city is dealing with homelessness. The goal is to get all municipalities in one room to adopt a regional and coordinated approach, he explained.
“That is something that I think has been apparent in sort of different jurisdictions,” Hume said. “(It’s the) response to things that may solve (issues) for them, but then it creates other issues for others.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
