Sacramento DA Thien Ho is suing the city for river pollution caused by Canada Geese | Opinion

District Attorney Thien Ho’s misguided lawsuit against the City of Sacramento over its response to the homeless crisis has now expanded to the encampments along the America and Sacramento rivers and their impacts on aquatic life. Not only is Ho wrong by framing this crisis as the city’s fault, but when it comes to poop in the river, he is going after the wrong species.

In a lawsuit first filed in October, Ho is attempting to frame homelessness as a nuisance and compel a judge to do something which even Ho’s own litigation doesn’t make clear. The underlying problem is that Sacramento has more unhoused residents than places to shelter them because the county, the local provider of social services, has not created sufficient shelter space. And despite the city’s creation of more than a thousand shelter beds, thousands of residents have no alternative than to live somewhere outdoors.

Declaring homelessness a nuisance would solve none of the root causes of skyrocketing rents combined with a lack of sufficient affordable housing and mental health and substance abuse programs. That would take governments working together, not fighting in court. Ho clearly prefers the fight.

Ho’s legal crusade began with allegations that the city was creating a nuisance by failing to issue citations to occupants of encampments that were spilling onto city sidewalks. As if writing tickets will make this problem go away. The city has countered with a legal motion known as a demurrer to seek a declaration by Sacramento County Superior Court that the case has no legal grounding. A key hearing is scheduled for next month.

Meanwhile, Ho is now contending that only those homeless encampments along rivers in city limits - not in the unincorporated county - are a nuisance.

““The occupants of the camps utilize the waterways to wash clothing, cooking utensils, dishes and other personal items,” the complaint says. “The food waste and soaps and detergents used are deleterious to aquatic life.”

Concerns about E. coli contamination along the American River are nothing new. In 2021, the regulators protecting both the public and wildlife of the river, the Central Valley Water Board, did extensive testing of the river, including a DNA analysis of detected E. coli.

The finding: “The main sources of bacterial contamination are birds and other wildlife, with negligible contributions from humans,” the water board found. The real problem is not the homeless. It is Canada geese.

“The most prolific bird activity in and near the water appears to be Canada geese, which can land on the river in a large flock,” the water board said. “In slow-moving sections of the river, the geese can stay for hours at a time and can cause elevated E. coli levels.”

Ho’s lawsuit, meanwhile, is getting intensely personal against Mayor Darrell Steinberg. Ho blames the mayor, who has no such authority, for directing city police to take no action against homeless people on sidewalks. In his amended lawsuit, he refers to this as “Darrell’s Directives.” With homelessness being such a multi-dimensional problem, Ho’s singular focus on the city and its mayor is both revealing and, frankly, sad.

What a waste of government resources. Real solutions to reduce homelessness will reduce all of the problems associated with it, including the associated garbage on the streets and in river encampments.

The District Attorney’s case, “People of California versus the City of Sacramento,” has as much chance of addressing the homeless crisis as “Ho versus Canada Geese.”

This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 12:58 PM.