Sacramento kept homeless warming centers closed during storm. Was COVID a bigger risk?
Approximately 60 people and four dogs slept on the floor of the Tsakopolous Library Galleria in downtown Sacramento last Wednesday. Some, but not all, of the people wore masks. The downtown space had been opened as a warming center for the homeless on a night when the temperature would eventually drop to 39 degrees.
The temporary shelter did not reach its capacity that night. Some chose to sleep in tents across the street in Cesar E. Chavez Park. Others remained in encampments, cars or doorways around the city. Two other warming shelters — a downtown parking garage and the pool house at Southside Park — remained mostly empty.
Ninety-nine people visited the galleria that night, said city spokesman Tim Swanson. Not all of them chose to stay. My visit to the warming center came just over a week after a major storm blew through Sacramento, destroying tents and exposing homeless Sacramentans to the harsh elements. At least four people died on Sacramento streets between Jan. 25 and Jan. 27. After a public outcry, the city finally opened some warming centers.
Bringing people in from the cold, however, is not always a simple task.
“I’d rather be outside than in a house because of incarceration,” said Zhara Lonz, 34, who rode out the storm in her tent near the corner of 19th and K streets. The mother of five said she has been repeatedly arrested on drug charges during five years on the street.
Asked whether she would have gone into a warming center that night, she answered definitively: “No.”
I got the same answer from Matthew P., a Sacramento native who has been homeless since getting out of prison in September and declined to give his last name. The 39-year-old, who stays in an encampment near 29th and C streets, said he would rather “be on the outside and actually be in it” and would prefer to let others take available shelter space.
Neither had plans to visit the warming center.
In the storm’s aftermath, some activists blamed City Manager Howard Chan for refusing to open the center and demanded his termination. Others announced a recall effort targeting Mayor Darrell Steinberg. As many in the community seethed with outrage, Chan seemed like a deserving scapegoat. After all, Steinberg and other members of the City Council had pleaded with him to open the shelter.
Even if Chan had opened the library shelter, however, less than 100 people would have escaped the storm. Thousands of people would have remained outside no matter what. Homelessness in Sacramento, and in California, has been out of control for years. No city or county has developed a mechanism by which to instantly solve homelessness in the face of an impending disaster. Homelessness was itself a raging crisis long before the storm hit
And the storm wasn’t the only threat that night. Chan said the major factor in his decision was the one that has ruled our lives for the past 11 months: COVID-19.
“We’re in a worldwide pandemic now,” said Chan in an interview with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board last week. “I’m looking at the number here: approximately 87,000 confirmed cases with 1,300 deaths in Sacramento County.”
Chan said he had to weigh the risk of creating a COVID superspreader event against the dangers of the storm.
“It’s a balancing act,” Chan said. “It’s not a straightforward, you know: ‘Hey, it’s raining outside, it’s cold, we’ve got to bring people in.’”
Chan seemed humble but unapologetic. Did he make a mistake? He doesn’t know yet. With a more contagious COVID variant spreading, he said gathering homeless people indoors remains a big gamble.
Getting fired seems like the least of his worries.
“I don’t want to be in a place where I’m not needed or valued or, worse, I’m doing harm,” Chan said. “I will leave that to my bosses. If I get an indication they don’t want me here anymore, I will not go kicking and screaming. I will say ‘thank you.’”
After it became clear the City Council wouldn’t fire Chan, angry activists turned their full wrath on Steinberg. A group of approximately 40 black-clad individuals stormed the mayor’s home on Saturday night, causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage and terrorizing Steinberg and his wife.
Days before the attack, Steinberg had secured City Council approval to put $31.5 million into the city’s affordable housing trust fund. He has also pushed the city to establish sanctioned tent encampments, build tiny homes and revise zoning laws to increase the housing supply. Last year, he partnered with Gov. Gavin Newsom on Project Roomkey, which has moved nearly 23,000 homeless Californians into motel rooms over the past year.
Given this unprecedented level of action to address homelessness, the activists’ anger at Steinberg seems misguided. Neither he nor Chan created the homelessness crisis, and neither of them can fix it single-handedly. Thousands of people will continue to sleep on the streets of our city — and nearly every other city — until the federal government takes an interest in solving the crisis with a Marshall Plan-like effort to match its scale.
In the meantime, we must hope that COVID stays out of the city’s warming centers, where around 100 people currently shelter every night.
During my visit last week, I noticed a woman sitting alone, wrapped in a bright-colored sleeping bag. I saw her again the next morning at a SacRT light rail station on 12th Street. She identified herself as “Rose Gold” and said she’d been homeless since around Thanksgiving.
I asked where she usually sleeps.
“In a corner somewhere,” she said.
Where was she on the night of the storm?
“In a corner somewhere.”
The train arrived and she climbed aboard — maskless.
This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.