Why Sacramento doesn’t need Ashby as its shadow mayor on the homeless | Opinion
Last week, state Sen. Angelique Ashby took to social media to express her “deep concerns” about how “the mayor of Sacramento is proposing a tiny home project (for homeless people) in West Natomas” and urged locals to attend what turned out to be a sometimes heated community meeting Monday Night at Witter Ranch Elementary School.
The job of Sacramento’s state senator is normally to help Sacramento, not to criticize a good-faith effort by the city to respond to homelessness. Ashby’s criticism is doubly strange because, for this project, the senator from Natomas wants to have far more expensive amenities than proposed by the city, such as bathrooms in every unit, as opposed to a shared facility. But this same legislator voted for a state budget with zero dollars in it for projects like this in Sacramento.
Also, a red flag is how Ashby keeps framing this 40-unit project as the proposal of Mayor Kevin McCarty. It’s not McCarty’s proposal. It comes from the person who is really in charge, Interim City Manager Leyne Milstein.
A previous City Council, under a different mayor, delegated all authority to the city manager to establish new homeless facilities anywhere in Sacramento. McCarty is fully supportive of these tiny home projects, but the buck stops with Milstein, thanks to Sacramento’s form of governance that puts operations under the unelected city manager and not the elected mayor.
Ashby knows how the city works, but many city residents seem as if they don’t, which may have something to do with the political theater at Witter Ranch’s multi-purpose room Monday night. It was consistent with an emerging plot.
On the city’s most vexing issue of homelessness, Ashby is emerging as the shadow mayor to the real mayor, who also happens to be a political rival and with no love lost between the two.
“If you implement (tiny homes) haphazardly,...you’re going to do so much damage in your ability to move forward,” Ashby said in a recent interview. “The city shouldn’t be doing it alone. That’s the whole freaking point. Why is the city trying to, like, stretch for a solution?”
It was Ashby, without consulting McCarty, who dropped a bomb on local governance in June when she proposed legislation to consolidate most management of public housing and the homeless response into an existing, but expanded, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. McCarty, county supervisors and other local officials rallied against the proposal. The senator tabled her bill in July in hopes that local officials could agree among themselves on a more collaborative governance model.
Last week, McCarty was showcasing the staff’s proposal for three new tiny home sites, a safe parking site off Cosumnes River Boulevard and a safe camping site in the River District as evidence he was delivering on an election campaign that centered on the homeless issue. His support undoubtedly has been instrumental. But soon after staff unveiled the plan at last week’s council meeting, Ashby lit up her Facebook page with criticism.
At Monday night’s community meeting attended by more than 150 residents, most were loudly against this homeless project, showing varying degrees of humanity.
“Just because this (site) was identified as a potential site doesn’t mean it’s the right site,” said Michele Gray-Samuel a 25-year resident of the community. “I’m worried about my property values.”
Ed Perez, a 30-year resident of North Natomas, was in the minority who supported the project. “We all talk about this community,” he said. “Do we really understand what community means? We have to think about and care for others.”
Ashby says housing for homeless people must include on-site dining services, bathrooms in each room, available social services, and access to public transportation better than what Natomas has to offer. Such costs would make this project far more expensive and reduce the number of people who could live in it, absent a lot more money that isn’t expected to come from her California Legislature.
But in 2023, Ashby stood behind Gavin Newsom when he was championing tiny homes for Cal Expo, a proposal that has never come to pass. It would be a setback for the city if this proposed project in West Natomas never came to pass. Milstein has done more in eight months to find places for homeless people to live than her predecessor, Howard Chan, did after he got delegated this power to find new sites in 2023.
After years of failure, the city is finally making ground on creating more spaces for homeless people to live. Why is Ashby using her position and her platform to set herself up as the constant critic who is opposing what the city is doing?
This behavior by Ashby isn’t new. As Sacramento councilmembers struggled with Chan and his constant demands to raise his salary, Ashby took his side and praised him on her social media platform.
Ashby is entitled to her position as she has served Sacramento well for years. But now, she is opposing tiny homes in Natomas, even though the project is what Sacramento can afford and what Sacramento needs to get more people off the streets.
Sacramento also needs, at the very most, one mayor. A serial conflict between Sacramento’s mayor and state senator is not what the city needs.
This story was originally published September 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.