Sacramento nears breakthrough in homeless crisis. But the master plan furthers inequality

Sacramento is on the verge of a major accomplishment in its ongoing battle with the homelessness crisis — the city council will vote on Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s $100 million master plan and proposed safe ground sites on Tuesday. When fully implemented, the city claims it could serve more than 9,820 people annually.

Steinberg’s approach, tasking each council member to bring forward priority sites for a single up and down vote, was designed to avoid NIMBYism. This strategy could also create significant capacity that could actually make a difference for the unhoused population, as well as residents and business owners who have been impacted.

But now that the plan is here, we need to be honest about its not-quite-final form. City leaders have concentrated the 20 priority sites along the light rail corridor and on public properties where it was easiest to launch safe grounds. In plain language, that’s near south Sacramento transit stations, under the W-X freeway near Broadway and throughout the industrial hub in the northern city.

To avoid NIMBYism, the plan avoided the biggest NIMBYs, many of whom reside in Sacramento’s well-heeled neighborhoods. The Land Park, East Sacramento and Pocket neighborhoods remain undisturbed by the master planning process.

Responding to this emergency humanitarian crisis was supposed to require buy-in from every neighborhood in Sacramento because every neighborhood has been touched by homelessness. Citywide compassion was the driving force. But with the plan nearing completion, it seems like homelessness will still be felt unevenly by the residents who have been closest to it all along.

The plan is not fair in how it’s been sited, and it perpetuates complex layers of inequality that already exist within these neighborhoods.

North Natomas, home to District 1 Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, does not have a single priority site — zero. Ashby is negotiating a future motel conversion shelter for women and children, as well as scattered sites, which are individual housing units procured by the city.

The hotel is an undeniably crucial addition that will house hundreds of people, and the thoughtful services Ashby is coordinating are humane and righteous. But until the purchase is finalized, her district’s contribution is nonexistent. Moreover, offering the motel alone completely misses the urgency of this moment and the type of triage that’s needed right now for this citywide crisis.

The baseline is shelter and service for each of the estimated 11,000 unhoused people within our city because the issue has grown out of control. Transitional and permanent housing — while still the goal of the master plan — are the aspirational policies that failed us years ago. Today, it’s about the basic steps of cleaning streets and getting people indoors.

Sacramento leaders can complain all they want about feasibility and the merits of safe grounds altogether, but that’s a copout and has been for over a decade now. It’s a smokescreen to hide a lack of political will to pursue what’s uncomfortable but necessary.

Some officials, like first-year Councilman Sean Loloee, deserve credit for coming around to that. After putting forward just a single safe parking site in arguably the hardest-hit district in the city, Loloee uncovered several more sites over the past two months. North Sacramento alone will now have capacity for roughly 1,000 people.

Steinberg was right last week when he said “we can’t cure the problem … but we can make it better.” The master plan deserves broad support. It’s the most significant action Sacramento has ever taken to address homelessness.

But we also need to be honest about the inequity in its first iteration. We need to be honest that it’s not the entire community stepping up to be a part of Sacramento’s solution — it’s some of it.

This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.