Sacramento City Council is taking a major vote on homelessness at the worst possible time

In a few hours, the Sacramento City Council is going to take a monumental vote on homelessness in the worst possible manner.

The council is holding a special meeting at 5 p.m. to vote on the “Emergency Shelter and Enforcement Act of 2022,” a ballot initiative that would fundamentally change how Sacramento provides shelter, enforces camping laws and responds to homelessness. The meeting was sprung on the public with almost no notice while the community is reeling from the deadliest shooting in Sacramento history.

The timing and process are rotten. And that’s before we even get to the questionable substance and deceptive framing of the measure itself, or the way it was drafted and negotiated chiefly by an unelected city manager and business leaders.

The council must at least postpone this vote.

This is the biggest issue in our city, and it requires substantive, thoughtful discussion. Every Sacramento resident and every unhoused person could be affected. To introduce a ballot measure this important and then vote on it a day later is disgraceful.

Last summer, the council passed a comprehensive plan and authorized $100 million in one-time COVID relief funds to stand up emergency shelter sites across the city. The city has largely failed to implement the plan. Hampered by outside agencies, lawsuits and NIMBYism, the effort has changed little for the unhoused people living on our streets and parklands, deepening the frustrations felt by everyone in Sacramento who wants to see progress on homelessness.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg proposed a groundbreaking right-to-housing ordinance last fall that included an obligation for unhoused individuals to accept shelter when offered. It was controversial but ambitious, and it could have sparked a meaningful debate toward making it fairer and more effective.

Yet business leaders, the city’s most powerful constituency, took matters into their own hands and pushed for their own ballot measure, which proposed unrealistic benchmarks that would have exposed the city to costly litigation and impossible financial obligations. It currently costs the city roughly $33 million annually to provide 1,100 shelter spaces, and it would have cost an estimated $192 million a year to meet the requirements of that proposal.

The result of these competing measures is the one the City Council will vote on this evening. It was negotiated behind closed doors and largely by influential business leaders and unelected city administrators. The new proposal eliminates the city’s financial exposure but establishes only meager requirements for sheltering and housing a small fraction of the most vulnerable people in our region.

This is not a right to housing, and it is certainly not how Sacramento should mount a far-reaching response to a humanitarian crisis. It allows business interests to dictate policy that will affect everyone. It is a breach of public trust at a moment of immense anguish for the city.