Can’t Sacramento’s leaders agree on how to better manage homelessness? | Opinion
The last thing the Sacramento region needs is prolonged litigation over how to manage homelessness, yet this looms as an all-too-real possibility.
State Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento has been trying for months to gain support for a bill she authored that would create a joint powers authority to essentially compel local governments to coordinate their efforts on homelessness. Attorneys for Sacramento County oppose Ashby’s SB 802 by suggesting it could be illegal.
“SB 802 contains many fatal legal flaws and, if challenged, will not survive judicial scrutiny,” wrote Lisa Travis, Sacramento County counsel, in a memo to the Board of Supervisors on March 9.
Despite the county’s opposition to this approach, the Sacramento City Council will discuss varying duties for a homeless JPA on Tuesday night.
Ashby’s bill is a lightning rod that has evenly divided the Sacramento City Council and created unanimous opposition from the county. It’s inevitably a second-rate solution, because she is basically asking the Legislature to resolve Sacramento’s lousy way of managing homelessness.
SB 802’s very existence is an embarrassment to this region because it exposes how our leaders haven’t routinely met in public for years to address this humanitarian crisis. And what is particularly striking is with this legislative cloud looming over the region’s head, SB 802 hasn’t yet been the impetus to figure out a way to collaborate.
The City Council appears just as insistent about managing the homeless through a joint powers authority as the county is opposed. Nobody is budging.
This is silly. Any way to better collaborate is better than the status quo. Those living on the streets, who could use the best possible response from local governments, are the ones suffering here.
Regardless, Ashby says she has the votes to move her bill through the Legislature and has vowed to send it to the governor’s desk with or without local support.
“If I were the county, I’d be worried about two courts,” Ashby said in a recent interview. “There’s the court of law and there’s the court of public opinion. I don’t think the argument that we don’t want to work together is going to be well received by the people in this region.”
A screwy way to not manage homelessness
Managing homelessness requires collaboration and cooperation of the highest order. The problem is so complex, with government responses ranging from law enforcement to social services to the basic cleanup. In a recent week in the city of Sacramento alone, crews had to pick up 62,240 pounds of trash.
The overwhelming majority of the unhoused are now increasingly concentrated in the city of Sacramento. It falls to the county to provide them with mental health and addiction treatment services. If the leaders of these two institutions don’t communicate in a formalized way, how is homelessness ever going to be solved?
SB 802 seeks to elevate the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency from a city-county authority to one that includes neighboring cities such as Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights and Elk Grove. The bill would direct this expanded agency “to coordinate its operations with the housing and homelessness departments of each participating jurisdiction, as specified, to ensure alignment of local priorities and effective delivery of services.”
As acting Folsom City Attorney Sari Dierking previously said, SB 802 is “unprecedented.” Normally, local agencies agree to form a joint authority for one reason or another as opposed to the state mandating its creation. That’s why the county thinks SB 802 is illegal.
“Any requirement that the County of Sacramento restructure, expand, amend or rename an existing joint power authority is legally flawed,” Travis said.
Precedent-setting cases tend to get appealed. Something like this might even interest the California Supreme Court. This kind of legal dispute wouldn’t be over in months; it could easily take years.
SB 802’s widening political fault lines
Sometimes the threat of legislation from a powerful politician like Ashby can motivate a solution to a problem like this. Relations between the senator and the board seem icy at best — and patience is running out.
“Every year that we don’t work together we continue to make less progress than we would if we coordinated efforts,” Ashby said.
The relations between Ashby and supervisors are downright rosy compared to a years-long rift between the senator and Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty, who left the California Assembly in 2024.
The mayor recently hinted at some potential future progress that hasn’t yet happened.
“We need to have a public-facing effort that meets on a monthly basis,” he said. “I think we’re going to memorialize such an effort. It won’t be exactly what SB 802 says, but it…will be a structure to have better coordination.”
McCarty’s ad hoc concept is far different from the formal JPA concepts that the council will discuss Tuesday. There are many ways to work better together. It’s a matter of agreeing on a path.
Needed: A podium moment
Political problems like this beg for a podium moment — a ceremony announcing a solution with plenty of positive speeches. This is the only way for Ashby, McCarty, the supervisors and other city leaders to all claim victory. But it would have to be truly substantive.
The legal cloud over SB 802 disqualifies it as the ultimate solution. But if it helps motivate the city and county to come up with a workable and voluntary alternative, there’s a chance for the homeless, the greater public and a lot of elected officials to come out of this as winners.