Sacramento needs effective homelessness policy. Here’s our recommendation on Measure O

The deepening homelessness crisis in Sacramento and the mounting frustration over elected leaders’ failure to address it have resulted in an irresponsible city ballot measure that encourages the public to take matters into their own hands. But enacting this proposal would do little to change the lives or number of unhoused people on the streets of Sacramento or to placate voters desperate for improvement.

Measure O is essentially about being able to move homeless people from place to place with stronger enforcement policies and little else. The illusion of progress being sold to the public by Sacramentans for Safe and Clean Streets and Parks, the coalition of special interest groups and influential business leaders behind Measure O, is as bad as doing nothing, which could very well be the result.

The design of the Emergency Shelter and Enforcement Act raises questions about whether it could even survive a legal challenge given how federal courts have defined the type of shelter that must be offered before a camp can be cleared.

“There’s a lot of confusion about what (Martin v. Boise) means, and people want to read it (in a certain way) to further their own interests,” Sacramento civil rights attorney Mark Merin, a Measure O opponent, said in an interview with The Bee’s Editorial Board.

In subsequent court rulings, judges have repeatedly defined the shelter requirement before enforcement is allowed as enabling “sleeping indoors,” Merin noted, pointing to a decision related to the Boise case and a more recent ruling in Chico.

Under Measure O, Sacramento officials would be obligated to spend up to $5 million annually and provide emergency shelter to just 12% of the city’s unsheltered population, or about 600 of the nearly 7,000 people counted sleeping outdoors across the county. The definition of shelter in this initiative is as minimal as a 100-square-foot campsite or a 150-square-foot parking space, options unlikely to be accepted by the people who need them. They also may not comply with the law.

Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce President Amanda Blackwood suggested that Measure O proponents are taking a “user-centered” approach by offering patches of asphalt in lieu of shelter and services for homeless people. This idea is seemingly based on anecdotes rather than expertise. So is the measure itself, which was drafted by bureaucrats and political operatives who have convinced many in Sacramento that this doomed policy is the only reasonable alternative to governmental inaction.

Among the ostensibly convinced are most of the City Council and Mayor Darrell Steinberg, whose right-to-housing proposal was bastardized and repackaged in the enforcement-forward form of Measure O. In an interview with proponents, Steinberg Institute CEO Karen Larsen conceded that the measure conflicts with California’s housing-first laws, which decades of research have shown to be the most effective strategy for bringing people indoors and sustaining psychiatric and substance abuse treatment for those who need it. Unfortunately, cities have spent decades resisting projects that could expand their capacity to do that.

For Larsen, Steinberg and even some of those who oppose Measure O, including Merin and Public Health Advocates senior policy director Flojaune Cofer, the most redeemable aspect of the proposal is a pending side agreement with Sacramento County, which came about only after county supervisors failed to adopt a similar initiative and instead passed several shortsighted anti-camping laws.

The City Council amended the measure in August in an attempt to compel the region’s largest government to do its job and deliver the health and human services it has historically resisted providing. Under the amendment, the measure will never take effect if a city-county agreement is not reached.

If the measure passes and political egos don’t derail negotiations, it’s paramount that city and county leaders craft an agreement with specificity, transparency and accountability that overcomes the fatal flaws of the ballot measure.

A more appropriate solution would enable enforcement only if it complies with the law, funds sufficient new housing or shelter, and brings public agencies, service providers, businesses and the entire community together to honor public demands for action. Sadly, no such proposal has gained traction in California’s capital city, and voters could wind up reinforcing the same failed policies that allowed unsheltered homelessness to reach this magnitude in the first place.

Rejecting Measure O would demonstrate that Sacramento is done with the same hopeless strategies that leave most of the city’s unhoused people without shelter and enable crackdowns that move them around until the next time they’re ordered to leave.

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 7:00 AM.