Don’t like homeless encampments in Sacramento? The city must establish safe ground

A shocking but familiar scene unfolded in Sacramento last week: Police and city workers used a bulldozer to clear a homeless encampment from our streets.

It happened on Ahern Street in the city’s River District. City officials said the encampment was cleared temporarily so the city could paint the curbs red. People who camped there because they have nowhere else to go said they didn’t know the sweep was coming. Some had heard about it only at the last minute.

“The mood was grim as dozens of men and women sat with their tents and belongings watching as a city bulldozer scooped up piles of blankets, clothing, bicycles, tents, cardboard boxes and trash from other campers who weren’t present at the time,” wrote Sacramento Bee reporter Theresa Clift.

She described one man sitting on the curb crying as another comforted him.

City spokesman Tim Swanson told The Bee the camp was blocking traffic, creating a safety hazard because emergency vehicles could not pass.

That’s a reasonable concern, but the city is skipping a step. If there’s a problem with people being where they are, why don’t officials encourage them to go somewhere safer?

Homeless advocates have long pushed local officials to recognize “safe ground” locations. Earlier this year, they asked Sacramento County to allow people to stay on what appears to be a publicly owned Stockton Boulevard lot, provided residents kept the lot clean. A few months later, the county sheriff ordered people staying there to leave.

Homeless rights advocates proposed a safe ground option in 2017.

“We made a very extensive proposal about how we would do everything and it would cost the city nothing, zero,” said attorney Mark Merin, one of the advocates.

Former City Manager John Shirey rejected it. City councilmember Allen Warren proposed a city-run tent shelter as an alternative to “unsanctioned” safe ground camps. His proposal failed.

The council seems ready now to consider fast-moving ideas. That includes a new proposal involving tents that Warren says can accommodate 700 people at once.

Merin worries council proposals are too restrictive.

“What they don’t address is an important component of any homeless encampment, and that is an element of self-government,” he said.

He thinks local leaders fear self-governance because it means recognizing homeless rights. “And once homeless folks are given a little bit of a platform, they will agitate for more.”

Local leaders clearly want control over where homeless people stay. The city and county have joined other localities in challenging a court decision that makes it illegal to prosecute homeless people for camping when no shelter beds are available.

Challenging a court decision so they can tell homeless people what not to do makes little sense when there are no alternative places for homeless people to go.

City-run solutions take time to approve and implement. Resources go only so far. The most ambitious shelter proposal from an elected official right now can help 700 people at once. There are at least 5,570 homeless people in the city and county, up 19 percent from two years ago. Yet this week we learned that the county will not be opening up a winter shelter this year.

We’re bulldozing their camps and canceling cold-weather sanctuaries. Where, exactly, are Sacramento’s homeless supposed to live?

Activists want to help, if local leaders will let them. But it’s not clear those in charge want homeless people and advocates running encampments themselves. Before pushing help away like they did before, officials should consider the scope of the problem.

The more people we can accommodate longer-term in established locations, the easier it will be to reach them with services to help them off the streets.

Homeless people want a chance at safety and stability. Housed residents want clean sidewalks. Whatever misgivings elected leaders have over safe ground, they must accept the fact that surging levels of homelessness are a testament to their own failure to find solutions.

Safe ground camps may not be perfect, but they’re better than the chaotic and immoral human rights violations that currently pass for policy in this city.