Sacramento County will get millions in the state budget, but we can’t trust them with it
Sacramento-area assemblymen Kevin McCarty and Ken Cooley announced Tuesday that they have included language in the California budget deal that would funnel $25 million to the County of Sacramento “to address the concerns of unpermitted homeless population on the American River Parkway.”
Another $25 million, you ask? The county has an annual budget of $6 billion and recently received an additional $100 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, a large percentage of which was supposed to address this very problem. And why it takes a pass on opportunities to gain millions in income through cannabis tax revenue is certainly a puzzle.
But though they don’t deserve this additional funding, maybe the supervisors will use it wisely this time, instead of playing three-card Monte with the Sheriff’s Department budget.
Maybe they won’t once again secretly back out of a deal again to provide badly needed shelter in downtown Sacramento, just a few weeks before work begins.
Maybe they won’t continue to abdicate their responsibility for the county’s homeless population to Sacramento City officials and the city’s comparatively smaller budget.
“As staunch supporters and active users of the American River Parkway, we have seen first hand the myriad of challenges facing this jewel,” McCarty and Cooley said in a joint statement. “We know that money alone cannot fix every problem, but we fought to get $25 million in the budget for Sacramento County to tackle this problem.”
The county is actually the rightful recipient of this money since they’re the ones who should be in charge of the response to a crisis in homelessness. It’s just a shame that they lack the urgency and focus to use it wisely. The homeless crisis on the American River Parkway has been obvious for a decade or more but the county’s response has been piecemeal and inadequate for just as long
McCarty said that the money is expected to go toward shelter and services, and yet, a statement from county representative Janna Haynes made no mention of a shelter: “The County is extremely grateful for the opportunity to use these funds to provide additional programs and services to help end homelessness for the unhoused neighbors living along the American River Parkway,” she wrote, adding that there was no definitive plan yet for the money.
McCarty, however, seems to be under the impression that the money he fought to allocate for the county will be used for a shelter. He even called out the possibility of NIMBYs who live along the parkway fighting against locating a shelter in their neighborhoods.
“Change is hard, and certain neighborhoods don’t want to see this,” he said. “It’s the same neighborhoods who say, ‘Hey, we don’t want homeless here’... (But) we may need to use some areas next to the parkway to save the parkway.”
Assemblyman Ken Cooley, who served for years on the Rancho Cordova City Council, said he’s seen “that with quality, accountable housing and relevant services delivered with good follow-up, both progress and happier endings were possible for formerly homeless or at-risk people.”
“For decades, with Rancho having just 5 percent of the County’s population, we had, at Mather, emergency and transitional housing for 38 percent of those the county served there.”
The key was accountable housing, Cooley said.
American River Parkway Foundation Executive Director Dianna Poggetto said much the same when she spoke to the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board last month. She told us that the county’s efforts to move the homeless must be done in conjunction with building more shelter spaces. But overall, Poggetto said now, the Foundation is encouraged by the influx of state budget money to go toward a new shelter space and services for the between 2,000 and 3,000 homeless people currently living on the parkway.
It’s clear that the county’s programs and services must be provided in conjunction with shelter, and all of the relevant parties are expecting one to be built with this new infusion of cash. To use it any other way would be a waste of money, time and effort.
But we’re now working against a deadly time limit that is of the county and city’s own making:
The county’s recent decision to sweep the American River Parkway will push thousands of unhoused people out of the public green space and back into areas like downtown Sacramento, and also allows law enforcement to break up any group of four people who are unrelated to each other, in a clear violation of every American’s — housed or unhoused — constitutional right to gather. And just in time, the Sacramento City Council has conveniently placed Measure O on the ballot, which would make camping on city sidewalks illegal.
Frankly, some elected officials in the county and the city should just admit that they wish to see them gone to any place but here because that’s the impression given every day.
This is a mess. A giant, litigious mess, borne chiefly out of the county’s inability to work with its largest city’s leaders, all while obnoxiously loud NIMBYs overrun public comment and business interests like the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce and Sacramento Region Business Association monopolize the city and county’s ear behind doors.
The policies of harassment and removal sought by our county’s government time and time again do not work. If a plan constantly fails, you don’t keep giving it millions of dollars and hope it eventually works.
It is time the county commits to using this money for shelter — and only a shelter.
Anything less from the county is a dereliction of their financial duty to constituents and their moral duty to the homeless.
