Darrell Steinberg: Sen. Ashby’s courageous homelessness bill is overdue | Opinion

Sacramento Sen. Angelique Ashby’s new bill, Senate Bill 802, would require Sacramento, its neighboring cities and Sacramento County to form a joint powers governance authority to make collective decisions about homeless policies, the siting of facilities, funding and the right balance between providing services and compassionate enforcement.

It would be patterned after Regional Transit and other multi-jurisdictional regional agencies, with the county and each city within it having elected representatives make key decisions together.

Twice over the past decade, the Sacramento County grand jury has strongly recommended what the senator is proposing in SB 802. The grand jury has argued that governing homelessness separately among five cities and Sacramento County was both ineffective and inefficient.

The majority of the region’s local leaders, however, quickly opposed Ashby’s bill, citing a multitude of reasons, from not being adequately consulted to the senator’s choice of the existing housing authority as the lead administrator for the new governing board.

Confronting Sacramento’s homelessness crisis

The senator’s assertive leadership — and the immediate and reflexive opposition to her call for change — brought back a few of my own memories from my time in Sacramento political office.

When I came back to local government in 2016 as mayor of Sacramento, I thought that the political and civic culture had evolved since my earlier stint in local government. By 2016, Sacramento was already changing from a quieter government town to a cosmopolitan city — a region with vision and ambition. Despite a global pandemic, we continue to grow as a city and region markedly different from the way it used to be.

But with growth comes challenges, including the cost of housing and an unsheltered homeless population. When I confronted homelessness, the city’s most visible crisis in 2017, the city had no resources or direct authority over the problem. I found out quickly that the old Sacramento culture of isolated governments and disorganized and reactive business leadership had actually not changed all that much.

I persisted.

Along the way, my prodding, cajoling, elevating and “we can do better” style ruffled many feathers as we asked that the city’s government and business partners to take on the homeless issues with the highest urgency; to acknowledge and address the complexity of the problem and its many needed solutions.

I became the main target for a frustrated public as we tried new approaches and invested unprecedented resources to get people off the streets.

But we made undeniable progress. And, in part because of my early and consistent push and the tens of millions of state dollars we created directly for cities, Sacramento went from less than 100 beds for homeless residents to approaching more than 1,500 nightly beds and counting.

Combined with our county partners stepping up, a foundational partnership agreement between the city and county and the establishment of the city’s Department of Community Response, we achieved the largest reduction in unsheltered homelessness in the state over the last several years.

But it was much harder than it needed to be.

While some county and regional leaders stepped up alongside some thoughtful business leaders, the quiet conversation in the public and private civic circles was always the same: We don’t want to touch homelessness with a 10-foot pole. It’s too hard. Just make it go away. Let the city and its enthusiastic mayor deal with it.

The insider culture was never more obvious than when some self-anointed business leaders pushed a ballot measure in 2022 mandating that the city do even more on homelessness while ignoring the county and its legal responsibility for addressing homelessness, mental health and substance abuse.

Political gestures are easy. Achieving and improving upon a 29% decrease in homelessness and getting thousands of additional people out of encampments will require the end of the era where each city and the county make separate and sometimes conflicting decisions on how to address this most complex societal problem.

All that to say: Ashby’s courageous bill is both bold and overdue.

Ashby’s bill sparks needed discussion

If Sacramento leaders are truly interested in new and better approaches to addressing homelessness, they must get engaged now. Take advantage of the creative tension and improve Ashby’s idea and bill.

The senator is being criticized for not being collaborative. I experienced the same tired complaint.

The opposition’s dismay assumes that Ashby is interfering with some existing momentum to change the fragmented way our local governments make decisions on homelessness. It assumes that local leadership is willing to even have the discussion that her provocation is demanding.

The same leaders opposing her bill also opposed then-Assemblymember Kevin McCarty’s weaker version of the same legislation. Sometimes provocation and controversy are the only way to begin overdue conversations that truly move the needle.

Our current siloed government approach violates basic principles of representative government: Why should Sacramento city leaders have most of the accountability (and public ire) without any real authority to determine the policies and funding priorities for people in the city who desperately need help?

The only way to give elected city officials some authority to match the public’s high expectations is to allow voters some say in key decisions on how to sustain our progress on homelessness.

Ashby’s idea centers one of the most important decisions for the future of the Sacramento region. In the midst of deep health care cuts at the federal and state levels, will we demand a unified and coordinated approach for our most vulnerable populations and our most difficult challenge?

A great regional controversy is nothing but an opportunity to break some of the tired, old ways of doing things. I hope we continue to push ourselves to change old cultures and old ways of governing that no longer match the aspirations of a growing and dynamic region.