Is Ashby’s Sacramento homeless bill legal? This union can’t be arranged | Opinion
There still are some places in the world where marriages are arranged by elders who think they know best. The Sacramento state capitol is not one of them, and a local bill to force the creation of a county-wide authority to manage homelessness is not only out of the custom of California governance, but it is quite possibly downright illegal.
State Senate Bill 802 by Democrat Angelique Ashby of Sacramento would strip local governments of their ability to decide whether to join a new county-wide homeless agency. SB 802 would designate their participation instead.
This loss of power has caught the attention of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, which has advised the senator in a recent letter that her legislation may be unlawful.
The legislation “stabs an arrow through the heart of local control,” said Supervisor Patrick Hume at last week’s board meeting. “And I don’t see that as being beneficial.”
SB 802 “represents bad policy,” said board Chairman Phil Serna.
Ashby disagrees. “Joint Powers Authorities (JPA’s) are established by legislation,” the senator said through a spokesperson Monday. “In the instance of SB 802, we are not creating a new JPA but rather we are consolidating other efforts in Sacramento County into one existing JPA. This structure will create efficiencies, accountability, and will eliminate, as much as possible, the history of working at counter purposes in the region.”
The county’s unanimous opposition to the legislation, echoed by cities throughout the region, puts SB 802 in uncertain territory. The legislation, dramatically rewritten just a few weeks ago, faces its next hearing test on Wednesday before the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee. It would face at least one more committee hearing before returning to the Senate for concurrence, if it were to get that far.
The only time it makes sense for Sacramento legislators to tell a corner of California how to govern itself is if most of the leaders in that community agree and are looking to the capital for help.
To be sure, that SB 802 exists, and that Ashby is sticking her neck out and proposing aggressive legislation, signals that the management of homelessness in Sacramento is flawed. It begins with supervisors who refuse to hold joint meetings on this crisis with fellow elected officials.
But legislation ultimately lives or dies on its own merits and its support base. A local bill with more opposition than support puts the lawmakers from other communities in an untenable position.
SHRA is in the board’s crosshairs
It was more than 40 years ago that the Sacramento City Council and county supervisors respectively voted to create the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. Ever since this authority has managed certain affordable housing programs and certain grant funds as redevelopment efforts have wanted in recent years due to a lack of funding.
SB 802 seeks, without any local approvals, to expand SHRA into a county-wide agency, to expand its authorities to encompass homeless management with available state funds, and to be governed by a new 11-member board that includes representation of all the county’s major cities.
The state law that allowed the city and county to create SHRA in the first place “ is intended to support voluntary cooperation among public agencies— not allow the state to impose participation or control,” supervisors wrote to Ashby. SB 802 “contradicts both the intent and legal framework of the Joint Exercise of Powers Act.”
Supervisor Rich Desmond, who has notified Ashby that he does not support her legislation, said last week that “the legal issues that are identified in this letter, I think, are really compelling.” The new and expanded SHRA “would encompass everything that we do in terms of our homeless prevention and response.”
Serna accurately noted that a previous attempt by then-Assemblyman (and now Sacramento Mayor) Kevin McCarty to create a county-city joint authority did not mandate participation.
“That’s a big distinction,” Serna said. But supervisors opposed that, too. Some distinction.
That Ashby is seeking to elevate SHRA is a power play with supervisors in particular, as they are in the midst of a months-long effort to figure out how better to manage this agency. “We have asked for an audit in order to examine the efficacy and effectiveness of the agency as it exists, and have yet to have the information presented,” Hume said. That Ashby now wants to champion SHRA is an “irony (that) is not lost on me.”
The supervisors are hoping that Ashby tables the bill and helps lead in some other path to collaboration on the county’s most difficult issue. Supervisors have every right to challenge the legality of what Ashby is up to. They may be right. We’re years into this homeless crisis, and I’ve yet to hear a single idea out of this board on how to better collaborate with cities in a public, transparent, structured and ongoing basis.
It’s not enough to be against SB 802. It’s time for the supervisors to be for something.
This story was originally published July 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.