Planning a Sacramento City Council recall over mimosas and brunch won’t fix homelessness

Some Sacramento residents are so fed up with the inadequate response to homelessness that they are mobilizing to recall City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, foolishly blaming the freshman representative for a crisis that extends well beyond city limits.

Naturally, this frivolous backlash begins with a boozy brunch.

A flyer circulating in affluent East Sacramento neighborhoods stirred an uproar on social media because of its invitation to brunch and mimosas in McKinley Village to discuss “protecting our families and homes from encampments” and “voting for city council representation.”

Nothing says finding solutions to extreme poverty like champagne and a sumptuous breakfast spread.

The event is being hosted by a group called Safe Neighborhoods and Parks of Sacramento, a band of 150 residents “organized to stop the rapid emergence of homeless encampments in residential neighborhoods,” according to the flyer. The group did not respond to an interview request.

Decorated with large photos of delectable breakfast foods, a vehicle encampment and a recent fire near a highway underpass, the comically tone-deaf flyer provides a snapshot of how residents of Sacramento’s well-heeled neighborhoods are agitating for visible progress on homelessness. Moreover, it’s an example of increasingly embittered community members taking matters into their own hands and targeting leaders like Valenzuela who have tried to do something about it.

“Everybody points fingers at each other,” lifelong McKinley Park resident Nick Kufasimes said of the ongoing rift between city and county governments. “Us as taxpayers, we’re not getting the leadership (we expect) with the amount of money we’re paying.”

In rare cases, East Sacramento residents have even bypassed city officials and gone straight to Caltrans to get encampments removed.

McKinley Park resident Amy Gardner, a founding member of Midtown & East Sacramento Advocates, or MESA, said people in the neighborhood contacted the state agency last fall because a camp between 29th Street and Alhambra Boulevard prevented children from safely walking to nearby schools.

Caltrans cleared the camp between F and H streets on Oct. 5, the day before National Walk to School Day. Some of the unhoused people who slept there simply relocated to an adjacent street.

“The safety of children getting to school has not been addressed by the city,” Gardner said. “They’ve been not caring about the kids. … When the public has to do the work of the city, something’s wrong.”

Outrage over the city’s handling of the humanitarian crisis has inspired the push to recall Valenzuela, whose district now includes East Sacramento because of last year’s redistricting. Valenzuela said she has to take the threat seriously given the prevalence of recalls in California and her refusal of corporate donations, which makes it harder to quickly raise money.

The brunch flyer attempts to draw a line from the sprawling impacts of homelessness to Valenzuela herself, blaming her for “Katie Camps” and “Katie Crime.” The frustration stems from the community’s recent turmoil over a potential safe ground campsite at Sutter’s Landing Regional Park, which was ultimately abandoned after a contentious meeting in McKinley Park.

“Part of what is frustrating is the same people yelling the loudest are the ones yelling the loudest against the solutions we’re proposing,” Valenzuela said. “I always tell people, I will hear any solution that’s practical and allowed under the law.

“They associate me with the continued problem. I don’t know what to do with that other than to keep pushing for solutions.”

Kufasimes, a state worker and East Sacramento Improvement Association board member, said he’s “not set on recall” but feels Valenzuela hasn’t listened to constituents or assured them that public safety and property values won’t be negatively affected by safe grounds. He pointed to the spillover tents that surrounded the city’s trial site under the W-X freeway, which closed at the end of last year.

“What I saw at W-X wasn’t a good neighbor policy. If you want to have a model of something to sell, you have to make it sellable,” Kufasimes said. “I think what we’ve done in Sacramento is we’re not arresting people, so we’re inviting a population that can get away with what they’re getting away with … and now it’s growing and growing.”

Behind the frustration of many East Sacramento residents are well-intentioned people who feel — as most of us do — that inaction on homelessness is inhumane and attributable to government dysfunction that fails the housed and unhoused alike.

“People are hurting right now,” Gardner said, “the person on the street and the neighbor living adjacent.”

What many East Sacramento residents ultimately want is stronger enforcement against encampments. Valenzuela told me she considers legal action a necessary tool, but because she views sweeps as destructive when there’s no available shelter, some of her constituents think she’s not listening to them. They are frustrated with who Valenzuela is and who she isn’t.

Councilman Jeff Harris, the representative most of the neighborhood voted for, is popular in East Sacramento, but his district moved to south Natomas. That’s why the criticisms of Valenzuela ring hollow when she’s governed the area for less than three months. East Sacramento residents want the council member they elected.

But recalling Valenzuela won’t solve anything. It will just appease a group of people who want the camps to go somewhere else, pushing the crisis into a neighborhood less equipped to mount mimosa-fueled recall campaigns.

East Sacramento has a NIMBY streak, evidenced by the decade-long fight to prevent the McKinley Village development from being built. Residents opposed multiple versions of the 336-home neighborhood and filed multiple legal challenges to delay or outright kill the project.

By most measures, McKinley Village has been a successful and seamless addition to the neighborhood. So much so, in fact, that it’s now the venue where the fight against the latest intrusion will be planned over brunch.