“It’s still a work in progress, but the effort should make for an interesting read.”
-Supervisor Pat Hume, regarding his July 2024 newsletter article “Unsafe Camping Ordinance” highlighting a fact-finding trip he attended in June with the Sheriff, the District Attorney and colleague Rich Desmond to explore additional solutions to connect the unhoused with shelter and services. Read it below:
Unsafe Camping Ordinance
“Last month, I had the opportunity to visit San Diego with my colleague Supervisor Rich Desmond along with Sheriff Jim Cooper, District Attorney Thien Ho, County Executive David Villanueva and other staff who work on our homeless initiatives here in Sacramento County.
We took the trip down there to learn more about what the City of San Diego is doing and to see firsthand their strategies for addressing the homelessness crisis. Our visit included conversations with Mayor Todd Gloria and his colleague Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, who led the effort to establish an Unsafe Camping Ordinance prohibiting unsanitary tent encampments.
In 2023, their City Council created City codes banning encampments on public property. Their new law prohibits homeless encampments in all public spaces if a shelter bed is available and prohibits encampments in certain sensitive areas such as parks, near schools, homeless shelters and transit stations, regardless of shelter availability.
This initiative was accompanied by new programs and code revisions to incentivize construction of new homes, coordinate street outreach programs, expand their safe parking program, create a comprehensive shelter strategy, establish safe sleeping sites and strengthen capacity for prevention activities.
The City of San Diego’s activities are supported by San Diego County with intensified efforts to connect people experiencing homelessness with services including social workers, outreach by the clinical community harm reduction team, mental health and substance abuse treatment services, crisis stabilization centers and expanded drug court access as an alternative to incarceration.
The San Diego Police Department also provides coordinated services, helping to track homeless individuals for additional outreach efforts along with enforcement of the unsafe camping ordinance in order to help connect the otherwise service resistant individuals with support services. In this coordinated approach, the City of San Diego, working with their partners such as the San Diego Downtown Partnership, are realizing reductions in not only the number of individuals sleeping unsheltered, but also the impacts of encampments to local businesses at some of their most challenging locations, like their Downtown Library and Transit Center.
I noted that many of the key strategies San Diego is utilizing are very similar to those included in our own Department of Homeless Services & Housing’s coordinated strategy. Sacramento County has a multi-disciplinary Homeless Engagement and Response Team (HEART) that provides coordinated access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, shelter, crisis stabilization centers and drug court alternative sentencing. The County provides these support services to each of the cities within our borders, including the City of Sacramento, along with all of the unincorporated communities.
Locally, the Board of Supervisors also adopted an ordinance to prohibit encampments within 25 feet of critical infrastructure or service provisions such as law enforcement, fire protection, transportation and utilities including communication, water and waste disposal.
In unincorporated areas, the Sheriff’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) works with our County staff to enforce this ordinance to help ensure safety near light rail and train tracks, fire and public health threats, and critically near our river levees, public utilities and sensitive areas and facilities serving children and youth, such as schools and libraries. After this trip, I anticipate unsafe camping considerations will be part of deliberations amongst my colleagues on the Board in our own County in the not too distant future.
Overall, I was pleased to see the efforts San Diego is making to address the needs of their homeless population and proud to note that Sacramento County is already implementing many similar strategies. We are continuing to work towards the further expansion of our shelters and rehousing capacity. However, we also face a challenge unique from San Diego in our higher summer temperatures. The Sacramento region faces more extreme weather events than San Diego does, with hotter summers and colder winters. This further exacerbates our need to get unsheltered folks off the streets and into shelter.
I’ll conclude this article by reiterating my commitment to ensuring the humane treatment of our homeless population while also ensuring our public investments are returning strong outcomes.”
A BIG Thank you to Supervisor Pat Hume for this report, as well as Supervisor Rich Desmond, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, and D.A. Thien Ho for all you are doing to help Sacramento County continue to make progress…More on that in the next update.