Sacramento leaders vow teamwork on homelessness but big names remain AWOL | Opinion
The warring political factions in Sacramento County that formed to support or oppose the coordinated approach to homelessness proposed by state Sen. Angelique Ashby are, for now, setting aside their differences and agreeing to find some approach that has a critical mass of support.
If this works, come next year, Sacramento will finally have a formal partnership between the county and its cities. It’s worth the shot. The alternative, to fight over the senator’s attempt to force collaboration through Senate Bill 802, was bound to fail.
Ashby on Wednesday pulled the bill from consideration before the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, avoiding what would have been a divided room of local leaders. Placing the bill on a two-year time path means SB 802 will be dormant until at least January.
“It gives us until January to make real progress on this issue,” Ashby told a gathering on the west steps of the Capitol Wednesday morning. “We have a deadline.”
The ‘pinky promise’
There’s reason to hope that Wednesday was more than mere theater of compromise. From a heated private meeting that included supervisors Patrick Hume and Rich Desmond as well as Sacramento Councilmember Caity Maple, Ashby and the supervisor from Elk Grove made what both referred to as a “pinky promise” that outlines a substantive framework of what a true multi-government partnership on homelessness would actually look like.
Hume and Desmond appear on board with a partnership that is “formal,” which is far superior to the dearth of any form of collaboration that simply isn’t happening today. SB 802 mandated a joint powers agency between the county and local governments and centralized homeless and housing efforts through an expanded Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. “Formal” may not mean a JPA. Even periodic meetings would be a breakthrough.
This new partnership would encompass homelessness and housing, include SHRA and Sacramento Steps Forward, the non-profit that manages the information system for county homeless residents. It’s to have funding. And it’s to include more cities than Sacramento, such as Folsom, Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova.
“We ultimately don’t know what the final structure of this will be,” Desmond said. Ashby vows to convene a meeting. Supervisors and the cities already have one scheduled for October.
“The skies are clearing and it appears Hurricane Angelique is dissipating,” Hume said. “We all agreed we could do better than our current response.”
Missing: Sacramento’s top leaders
Conspicuously missing from this moment of political kinship were the three most important local elected officials in Sacramento. Supervisor Phil Serna, who represents the northern half of Sacramento, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the supervisor representing the southern half, Patrick Kennedy. Mayor Kevin McCarty, who opposed SB 802, wasn’t there as well.
Serna rarely surfaces in public outside of the supervisor chambers on a homeless matter. He even missed the opening of a downtown homeless service center in 2003. Ashby’s icy relationship with the mayor is Sacramento’s worst-kept secret.
If this is to be successful, at least some of them have to ultimately participate. Ashby can merely legislate. A real partnership has no star of the show.
Yet there is reason to hope. Having supervisors unofficially endorse a formalized multi-government homeless partnership, details to be determined, is a big deal and a long time coming.
“Today,” said Maple, “marks an important step forward in our region.”