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Rather than finding ways to get Sacramento’s large homeless population the emergency medical and mental health services they need, Mayor Darrell Steinberg is threatening city residents with tent cities in their neighborhoods, calling Sacramento residents ‘NIMBYs.'
Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, as the Globe reported. This project only benefitted the union contractors.
Providing a roof over the heads of mentally ill drug addicts only enables their behavior. Where is the plan to change that behavior?
This is happening in major CA cities. Follow the money, folks:
If homelessness in California was sincerely and thoughtfully addressed, the state and federal funding would stop flowing. It’s a giant funding scheme.
We have a lot of homeless that have ended up in the North Area, starting from when they were doing all the construction downtown.
We have zero services for them--no food, no shelter, no medical. And daily reports of people finding homeless trying to live in their backyards, stealing from homes and cars.
And zero plans to do anything to help, other than individual people handing out food and stuff.
Rather than finding ways to get Sacramento’s large homeless population the emergency medical and mental health services they need, Mayor Darrell Steinberg is threatening city residents with tent cities in their neighborhoods, calling Sacramento residents ‘NIMBYs.'
Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, as the Globe reported. This project only benefitted the union contractors.
Providing a roof over the heads of mentally ill drug addicts only enables their behavior. Where is the plan to change that behavior?
This is happening in major CA cities. Follow the money, folks:
If homelessness in California was sincerely and thoughtfully addressed, the state and federal funding would stop flowing. It’s a giant funding scheme.
Steinberg deserves to have them all in *his* neighborhood for that.
However, the reality is that these people have to go *somewhere*. And frankly, where they should go is what is euphemistically called "The River District", north of the (former) Southern Pacific railroad tracks, east of whatever road / bridge connector will connect 5th Street to Truxel Road, west of the (former) Western Pacific railroad tracks, and south of the American River:
1. A good many of them are more or less permanently camped out in that area anyway, or in the adjacent American River Parkway,
2. Sacramento (City) Police and Sacramento (County) Sherriff HQs are in the area, making policing the homeless less difficult and police presence (at least coming and going) visible,
3. The area already has the social service facilities, both government and charitable, in the area,
4. The area is mostly (almost entirely!) industrial, so neighborhood objections would be just about non-existent, and
5. Vacant lots abound, which ideally would be sites for stacked efficiency apartments, shelter beds, etc.
Ideally, all services would be concentrated there for compassionate help, on entry level and menial job placement, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, and the like.
One big problem, however, is that the area has been slated for gentrification and redevelopment:
Already a whole new light rail "Green" line and new state office buildings at the area (which is no longer needed as much for State Printing) are popping up, as well as housing units like "Township 9" and The Cannery Place.
Either this attempted gentrification will fall apart, as the homeless will bring down the desirability and value of whatever The Powers That Be are trying to build there,
OR:
the homeless will be driven out of an area that frankly is the best of the lot for them, and they will go bedevil some other part of Greater Sacramento.
Apparently this newspaper's solution is "Eradicating the drug-addicted homeless" and they complain because "eradication" was "never on the table"? That sounds just a wee bit extreme to me, but then, Katy Grimes pretty much specializes in this kind of right-wing, borderline-fascist propaganda.
It's hard to know even where to begin with this article--on one hand, she doesn't want to allow encampments or tents, because that's cruel and unsanitary, but she doesn't want housing for them either, because then they're too comfortable, according to a guy who had zero experience with housing or urban development but was appointed to be HUD Secretary because it's the Cabinet role that Republicans save for their one token Black appointee. So they shouldn't be housed and they shouldn't be on the street, they shouldn't be in regulated campsites and they shouldn't be in unregulated campsites. Sincerely and thoughtfully addressing homelessness is done, in her opinion, by cutting all its funding and somehow making the problem vanish with no money. Near as I can tell, her preferred solution (per the example of St. John's and Haven for Hope) is comprehensive treatment programs, which, she utterly fails to mention, cost a lot more than just providing housing, or housing plus case management/outpatient treatment for those who have the issues described. Or jails, which also cost a lot more than just providing the housing and case management. And trying to address these issues while people are still on the street is hilariously expensive and completely counterproductive, because being on the street is part of what is such a huge detriment to people's mental health and sobriety. It's like trying to remodel someone's kitchen while their house is on fire. So it's really hard to tell exactly what she's proposing, other than the "eradication" mentioned earlier, which, I have to admit, sounds kinda fishy to me.
The bit about the downtown hotel is kind of weird--yes, the Capitol Park Hotel units cost about $450,000, but that's exactly the same cost as new-construction/low-rise affordable housing the same nonprofit company is building in West Sacramento and Folsom. She references the tiny 250 square foot units, but apparently is unaware that the Capitol Park Hotel building, pre-conversion, had even smaller rooms of 100-150 square feet, none with kitchens and only a few with bathrooms, and about two-thirds of them were vacant because the building was in such poor condition. The project was not proposed by the city but by a nonprofit affordable housing provider, who is fixing up a downtown landmark into 134 units of permanently affordable low-cost housing, at the same cost per unit as low-rise new construction in nearby suburbs. That's not something to be ashamed of, that's something to be proud of. I assume the bit about "union contractors" is because, in order to utilize the tax credits required to fund low-income housing, "prevailing wage" requirements are triggered, so those doing the work get paid at a level comparable to union labor, rather than a lower non-union rate. Again, that's something to be proud of: construction workers pay rent too, and paying them well is how they can afford to pay it.
I'm not sure why "It's a giant funding scheme" is supposed to be a damning insult. Yes, building large amounts of public-funded housing, whether transitional/tiny-house based or permanent, requires funding. Things cost money. Solving problems cost money. Spending that money wisely and frugally does in fact require a funding scheme. But that's how Katy works: make something innocuous and normal sound like something suspect, or just flat-out lie, like she does when she claims that neighborhoods weren't consulted about potential sites; this plan is a development of what the mayor was trying to do pre-COVID, in public meetings, developed further during COVID, also at meetings that folks could attend virtually and comment on, and most recently in a series of open houses by City Councilmembers and their staff throughout the city. Could they have done a better job at outreach? Sure. Could they have been more transparent and gotten more feedback? Sure. Would it have been nice if there were sites in the Pocket, East Sacramento, North Natomas and other wealthy neighborhoods? Definitely. But we also know that we would all be dead of old age waiting for those neighborhoods to step forward and pick an acceptable site--so the city decided to go forward with the sites they could get instead. Not ideal, but possible. Not cheap, because solving enormous problems is never cheap, no matter how much Katy wishes it would all go away for free.
Wow, NickB1967 actually kind of agree on a thing. That's cool. Yes, there are already a lot of social services in the River District area, and there are proactive efforts to develop the neighborhood, but there is not a lack of opposition to expanded social services there--in fact, private developer Steve Ayers and the River District Business Improvement District (BID) recently filed lawsuits to stop the city from converting a disused motel off Richards Boulevard into 100 units of transitional housing and 100 low-cost apartments. It wouldn't have even needed any new construction, because they would have just fixed up the motel building that's already there. Apparently back in the 1990s, the city of Sacramento agreed to not allow any more social services in the Richards Boulevard area, and the BID is holding them to it, despite a dramatically different situation a quarter-century later. Often it isn't "NIMBY" so much as "NIMBD"--not in my business district! I did note that Downtown Sacramento Partnership approved of the plan, in part perhaps because it didn't include any shelters or official campsites in the boundaries of the DSP BID.
It should be noted that the Green Line has been around for more than a decade, and "Cannery Place" is currently the only building that was built in Township 9, completed about the same time that the light rail line opened, and it's 100% affordable housing. The rest got caught up in the recession and then the developer went bankrupt, and I think the next developer who bought it also went bankrupt. Personally I'd love to see a whole lot more very-affordable efficiency apartments in the River District, along with housing for every other income level, and not just in the River District but in every neighborhood of the city, but those will require substantial public subsidy--and unfortunately for Katy Grimes, they're likely to be somewhat comfortable. And they will also have to find a way around the opposition of developer and building groups who are far, far better funded and able to successfully block projects than any little neighborhood group.
Because, despite Katy's assumptions that the folks we're talking about are some sort of subhuman monsters fit only for eradication, they're all just people. Some have problems, but for a lot of folks on the street now, the biggest problem is a lack of housing they can afford. We know based on analyses around the country that when rents increase, the number of homeless people increase--when rents go up, tents go up. Affordable housing is the primary component of the solution, and yes, it's not 100% of the solution, but nothing else works without it.
homelessness and California just seem to go hand in hand. Nice weather, generous benefits, it's really the place you want to be if you're homeless. It's growing by leaps and bounds all over the state.
The word has gotten out all over the country to come to CA where drugs are legal, crimes go unpunished and you can get free food at feeding stations. If you go to SoCal you can live on the beach next to celebrities!
A whole new industry has popped up -- the Homeless Industrial Complex. Government grants which seem to end up in the pockets of highly paid Presidents and CEOs of these homeless charities instead of helping people.
Funny how other cities seem to have handled this problem more effectively. I wonder why.
Because, despite Katy's assumptions that the folks we're talking about are some sort of subhuman monsters fit only for eradication, they're all just people. Some have problems, but for a lot of folks on the street now, the biggest problem is a lack of housing they can afford.
Many of these people actually prefer being homeless. Social workers will tell you this. Orange County tried to help them by giving them vouchers for hotels but those places had rules. They don't like rules, most don't want to work and why should they? They get government checks.
We have always had people like this but we called them hoboes and they rode the rails from place to place.
Why don't you offer shelter for these poor souls in your home and backyard?
Rather than finding ways to get Sacramento’s large homeless population the emergency medical and mental health services they need, Mayor Darrell Steinberg is threatening city residents with tent cities in their neighborhoods, calling Sacramento residents ‘NIMBYs.'
Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, as the Globe reported. This project only benefitted the union contractors.
Providing a roof over the heads of mentally ill drug addicts only enables their behavior. Where is the plan to change that behavior?
This is happening in major CA cities. Follow the money, folks:
If homelessness in California was sincerely and thoughtfully addressed, the state and federal funding would stop flowing. It’s a giant funding scheme.
There are services for the homeless, but there aren't enough places for them to sleep. This comment by Grimes "Rather than finding ways to get Sacramento’s large homeless population the emergency medical and mental health services they need' Infers that we can just round them up and throw them in rehabs or mental hospitals and you can't. It is unlawful to confine a person against their will unless they pose an immediate threat to harming themselves or to others or if they have been convicted of a crime. And if you put a mental health hold on someone it is for a 72 hour evaluation at which time a judge decides if they should be confined longer or released and almost all of them are released.
And this is an op-ed by Katy Grimes, yes the same Katy Grimes who calls herself a "Reagan conservative" but seems to have forgotten that it was Reagan who shut down all the mental hospitals in California and replaced them with nothing. Her screed just drips with irony
We have a lot of homeless that have ended up in the North Area, starting from when they were doing all the construction downtown.
We have zero services for them--no food, no shelter, no medical. And daily reports of people finding homeless trying to live in their backyards, stealing from homes and cars.
And zero plans to do anything to help, other than individual people handing out food and stuff.
I'm pretty sure they can get free medical care, and there are food banks. I know there are food banks because I have a despicable neighbor who buys groceries from homeless people who got them at food banks. He pays an older homeless man drive his truck to pick up 4 or 5 homeless people and take them to several food banks. He pays them, drops them off and returns 15-20 bags of food to my POS neighbor.
What they don't have are social workers or medical personnel who go to where they are living to try to help them, but since we have do nothing county supervisors who can we even complain to about this? I don't know if they are still doing it, but in Vallejo they had a police Chaplain, an EMT or nurse, and a social worker go out and contact homeless people, they tried to get them to identify a friend or family member they could stay with, found out if they had chronic or serious health conditions if they couldn't do anything else, they got them enrolled in medi-cal and the SNAP prepared meal program.
All the spots are mostly where a lot of the poors already live.
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