A ballot measure sold to Sacramento voters as a solution to homelessness is a sham | Opinion

Last year, voters in the city of Sacramento approved Measure O, a ballot initiative sold to voters by proponents as a vehicle to improve the crisis of homelessness on city streets.

In our opposition editorial to Measure O, we said, “...enacting this proposal would do little to change the lives or number of unhoused people on the streets of Sacramento or to placate voters desperate for improvement.”

Almost exactly nine months later, the predictable flaws of Measure O are already materializing. Sacramento has decided not to establish a citizen’s complaint process that voters approved in Measure O, saying it has already spent more than what the measure requires.

Measure O had hopelessly conflicting language: It mandated a new expensive appeals process among other directives. It also capped, at $5 million, the unexpended general funds the city annually needs to spend to achieve the directives, so that voters weren’t mandating some blank check. The city is now dealing with the measure’s contradiction.

The news surfaced at the City Council’s June 27 workshop on homelessness, as City Council member Eric Guerra asked City Manager Howard Chan why the city had not established a hearing officer to judge complaints by residents that the city was inadequately handling homeless challenges on city property.

“If you read the measure language itself, it literally caps our investment into homeless under Measure O,” Chan said. “I have been having conversations with many people in the community. And it is really striking to me that people have not read the measure, including the proponents of the measure. It is actually a little bit embarrassing.”

Guerra didn’t buy it.

“We have an obligation to what the law says, what the measure was approved by. So city attorney, can you answer that or have your team answer that?”

City Attorney Susana Alcala responded as follows:

“First and foremost, I want to say this is a case of first impression,” a common legal phrase referring to unchartered legal territory. “This is a brand new measure. We are in implementation stages. I know my office doesn’t have the ability to have a bunch of case law to review to determine how these terms are going to be interpreted by a court.”

The inherent contradiction in Measure O to spend more, but only so much, was captured in Alcala’s impartial analysis that went to voters in the fall as part of their ballot package.

The City Attorney’s office found that “the measure directs the City Manager to fund the commitments, obligations and liabilities created by the ordinance first from external sources (e.g. the state). If those are insufficient, the City Manager shall annually allocate up to 50% of unobligated General Fund year-end resources, not to exceed $5 million.”

As this Editorial Board predicted in our opposition, Measure O was never more than an empty sales pitch to address homelessness by moving some homeless people around, at best: “The illusion of progress being sold to the public by Sacramentans for Safe and Clean Streets and Parks, the coalition of special interest groups and influential business leaders behind Measure O, is as bad as doing nothing, which could very well be the result.”

We may actually be wrong; Measure O may be worse than nothing.

The more than 100 complaints filed with the city “are pending litigation items now,” Alcala told the council at the city’s workshop. All complaints are referred instead to its Department of Community Response.

The complaints should be reviewed in earnest. But lawsuits and legal fees would be grand distractions resulting in a diversion of public funds that could be spent far more productively.

There has been some progress since Measure O; The city and county of Sacramento have reached an agreement on how to make progress together, including a county commitment to build 200 new shelter beds in the city. If there is to be further progress in reversing the misery on our streets and along the American River, it is through a partnership with many governments.

Measure O sold a mirage that great things could somehow happen for $5 million and that Sacramento should be punished if the city’s unhoused residents remained a problem. That frustrated voters supported a false promise of progress is understandable. What all sides do now going forward is what matters. Let Measure O fade quickly into history as a sham.

This story was originally published July 7, 2023 at 5:00 AM.