Downtown Sacramento was a big loser in a California budget that stiffed cities | Opinion

Downtown Sacramento, and all urban centers in California, were among the biggest losers in the money sweepstakes known as the state budget. Turning the corner on the homelessness crisis did not get the level of money it needs.

Public schools, meanwhile, fared better, as did Californians who depend on publicly-funded health care or regional transit.

If the state budget is an expression of California’s priorities, state leaders have chosen to overlook the suffering of those who live on our big city streets in order to focus on helping vulnerable individuals who are on the brink of homelessness. The budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature approved late Monday is reliant on tax money that may not materialize if the future months are not as economically rosy as lawmakers assume.

Addressing the many facets of homelessness — shelter, transitional housing, permanent housing, mental health care and drug rehabilitation — has the same established need for funding as education, prisons or parks. Yet homelessness has no similarly established home in the state budget. It has to fight for the leftovers. Big city mayors end up fending for themselves and heading home with far less than they need.

The budget does provide $1 billion for the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program, an important pot of money that helps cities cover the costs of emergency shelters and other homeless needs.

But the League of California Cities was seeking three times that money, and to make it a permanent funding stream. That ask, in the context of the crisis, was exceedingly modest.

The most comprehensive examination of California homelessness to date recently found that housing is the primary cause. Nearly half are age 50 or older. When surveyed, the chief reason for their plight was the price of rent in California.

Sacramento has established institutional voices that can move the state budget needle inside the process. Primary and secondary schools get a guaranteed slice of the budget. There are strong lobbies to meet the needs of publicly-funded health care, climate change and transit.

Nobody got everything they wanted in this budget, but most needs fared better than homelessness. The unhoused are large in number, some 170,000 Californians and increasing each census. But they are small in clout, with no effective champion inside the halls of power..

Downtown Sacramento will not recover from the pandemic until it is no longer a tent city of human desperation. The same holds true for every major city in California. This is a vast problem that will require extraordinary partnerships among governments to make progress. That will take sufficient money. And that starts with a state budget that makes the needs of our urban cores a priority.

This story was originally published June 27, 2023 at 11:17 AM.