Sweeps are elephant in the room as Sacramento city, county officials discuss homeless crisis
In a six-week-late homelessness meeting, the city of Sacramento and the county gave themselves kudos but said there’s more work to do. At a Sacramento County Board of Supervisors meeting, county leaders dismissed concerns about encampment sweeps, despite these concerns. The meeting was part of a presentation of updates on the 14-month-old city-county partnership on homelessness. Only 61% of homeless people referred to outpatient behavioral health services by the county’s Homeless Engagement and Response Team actually receive these services, according to Timothy Lutz. The board's board Chair, Patrick Kennedy, also questioned the need for an exit interview for those referred to these individuals. The partnership has been successful in getting over 25,000 unsheltered homeless people into permanent housing since 2017. However, experts suggest that many of the agreement's terms have little impact on the overall emergency population.
Published : 2 months ago by Theresa Clift, Ariane Lange in Science
At the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, county leaders brushed aside a staffer’s concerns about encampment sweeps even as she explained that such law enforcement actions undermine the response to the homelessness crisis.
The supervisors meeting was the first of two presentations to the county and to the Sacramento City Council with updates on the 14-month-old city-county partnership on homelessness.
During the board presentation, Timothy Lutz, the county’s director of health services, said that only 61% of homeless people who are referred to outpatient behavioral health services by the county’s Homeless Engagement and Response Team actually end up receiving those services.
Board Chair Patrick Kennedy asked, “As far as the 120 or so (people) that didn’t make it to the next tier, do we do some kind of an exit interview as to why, so that we can get better?”
Lutz referred the question to Cait Fournier, a program coordinator on the county’s homeless engagement team, also called HEART.
Fournier said that those people often don’t get all the way to an appointment because “many of those individuals are lost to services. Meaning they get swept. They get cleared, and we don’t know where they went. … There’s a lot of reasons why people don’t show up for services, but a huge one is, we can’t find them.”
Kennedy responded: “Let’s keep the sweeps and all that on the other side. That’s completely different.”
Sweeps underpin the entire partnership agreement. Measure O — the business-backed 2022 ballot measure that allows more encampment evictions — is only operative because the city and county signed the partnership agreement.
But other than Fournier’s comment — and Kennedy’s request that it be set aside — sweeps were not substantively raised at the county meeting, though staff have said these evictions stymie efforts to address the crisis.
Staff have raised the issue internally with city and county leaders. At a Jan. 18 meeting between the city and the county, an email obtained by The Sacramento Bee through a California Public Records Act request shows county staff wrote on a whiteboard that “clearings & our association with them” were “NOT WORKING.”
In June, the city conducted a sweep and removed 30 vehicles along Roseville Road whose residents the county had been targeting for a “safe stay” parking lot. It appeared that the city undertook the sweep without coordinating with the county, which lost track of virtually all the people it intended to help with the parking lot. That planned lot was eventually scuttled by the county.
On Feb. 28, city spokeswoman Kelli Trapani said the city towed 10 homeless vehicles from Marconi Circle and Auburn Boulevard — which feeds into Roseville Road. City spokesman Tim Swanson said two of the people affected accepted city shelter spots.
‘A really good framework’ in an inadequate system
Sacramento County’s director of the Department of Homeless Services and Housing, Emily Halcon, said the partnership provides the city and county “a really good framework for our continued collaborations.”
The city and county’s collective efforts have gotten more than 25,000 unsheltered homeless people into permanent housing since 2017, Lisa Bates of Sacramento Steps Forward told the City Council on Tuesday.
“Take that as an affirmation that the struggles we have had … if nothing else helped tens of thousands of lives,” said Mayor Darrell Steinberg after hearing the number. “And that’s a good and a great thing.”
The mostly positive presentations given to the Board of Supervisors and the City Council on Tuesday largely echoed what Bee reporters found in a January report: The city and county have fulfilled most of the promises they made in the city-county partnership agreement, which went into effect Jan. 27, 2023. Most of the clear and time-bound goals had been met or almost met at the one-year mark.
But experts who reviewed the agreement also said that many of its terms would have little to no impact on the overall emergency.
Most concretely, the agreement called for the opening of 200 new temporary shelter beds within the first year of the agreement. This requirement was almost met: 191 beds were opened through the partnership in the first 12 months. But even that was wholly inadequate, said Ethan Evans, a professor at Sacramento State’s School of Social Work and a previous executive director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance.
The 191 new beds cover just under 4% of the unsheltered homeless population within city limits.
The week of Feb. 26, the city of Sacramento had 2,446 adults sitting on the shelter wait list.
Also on the wait list were an additional 645 homeless families with children.
The mayor acknowledged Tuesday that the city and county still had a long way to go.
“We can’t explain to the public why it is we don’t have the person running around half-naked in a program,” Steinberg said during the council meeting. “And if we can’t get them into one, we have to collectively ask ‘why?’ … Are we spending enough time in these big encampments to get people enrolled in the highest level of service?”
In the summary report filed with the Tuesday supervisors presentation, officials said that as part of the city-county partnership agreement, Sacramento helped to transition 214 individuals out of homelessness in the seven months between June 1 and Dec. 31 last year; over the entire year, 373 were transitioned into housing.
At the 2022 federal homeless count, more than 5,000 unsheltered people lived within city limits.
The Bee has previously reported that at least 227 people died homeless in the California capital last year, including a 75-year-old man, Asuquo Nyong, and a 4-day-old infant, Sophia Garst.
The county has said that for every person who exits homelessness in the county, three more people become homeless.
At least one element of the presentations on Tuesday was clearly inaccurate. In a section titled “Accountability,” the partnership agreement requires that a joint report is brought up for discussion “every six months following the effective date of this Agreement,” which was Jan. 27, 2023.
In both meetings’ slideshow presentations Tuesday, officials placed a green circle next to the six-month-update item to show “the requirement has been met.”
However, an on-time presentation would have transpired by Jan. 27, 2024. The March 12 meeting occurred 45 days late at minimum. By another measure, it was nearly four months late: the last “six-month” update was May 23, 2023 — just shy of 10 months ago.
Topics: Social Issues, Homelessness, Wildlife, Elephants