Sacramento’s Camp Resolution Closure Proves City Never Learns From Its Mistakes

The city of Sacramento proved one thing in its sweep of Camp Resolution in North Sacramento this week: It never learns from its mistakes.

On Monday morning, the self-run homeless camp on vacant city-owned land in Old North Sacramento closed. Camp Resolution once had the support of the city, which even signed a lease for the land with a nonprofit organization led by homeless advocate Mark Merin. It was occupied mostly by women, seniors and people with disabilities and reportedly had a waiting list of more than 800 people.

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However, concerns about soil contamination and reports of people sleeping in tents played a role in the city’s decision to move forward with the closure after months of desperate delays by camp residents as they struggled to find alternative housing.

It’s appalling that a standalone Safe Ground site—which cost the city next to nothing—ended in such acrimony; a disappointing example of the divide between Sacramento’s homeless population, two major homeless nonprofits now in conflict, and a city that has no problem with its branded bulldozers rolling through a community.

There were mistakes on the part of the local government and the homeless people who occupied the camp. But it is unfair to blame the homeless people who had no choice but to sleep on a piece of land and chose this place to do so.

It would also be unfair to suggest that the city has done nothing to alleviate the homeless crisis: A recent audit found that the city pays the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency $4.6 million a year to operate a 100-bed shelter on X Street, and $3.5 million a year to operate a 100-bed shelter in Meadowview.

But this editorial board maintains, as we have repeatedly, that Sacramento needs more housing and shelter. The urgency to get more homeless people off the streets and into shelters and safe sites that resonated so much at City Council meetings in the past is a distant memory.

The City of Sacramento simply will not solve the homeless problem by dismantling licensed and unlicensed encampments when there are not enough shelter beds available as a humane alternative.

And yet we recognize that the United States Supreme Court has given communities carte blanche to evict homeless people who have nowhere else to go.

The Court’s recent decision in Grant’s Pass v. Johnson has made it easier than ever to move the nation’s homeless, like a giant con game involving human lives. It has opened the door for local governments to declare it illegal to lie down in public spaces.

Moreover, Governor Gavin Newsom’s latest publicity stunt was to declare that California cities and counties could no longer expect to receive state funding if they allowed homeless encampments to remain. Newsom made this point clearly during a well-documented visit to a Los Angeles encampment, holding a trash bag as he helped clean it up.

None of these measures bode well for the state’s 181,000 homeless people, who have little access to support systems that, in one way or another, require billions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

We don’t expect the City of Sacramento to solve the homeless crisis on its own. Credit where credit is due, as the city has certainly filled the void left by the much better-funded (but absent) Sacramento County.

However, this editorial board showed some discernment in trusting City Manager Howard Chan and the Sacramento City Council last year when they told us that there would soon be a Safe Ground in every district. We gave them the benefit of the doubt when they kept this process secret, knowing that no matter which site was chosen, it would face a mountain of opposition.

Last August, a divided city council delegated Chan the authority to establish new homeless encampments in the city. Since then, the city has created one and dismantled two. Rumors of Safe Ground sites in each council district have vanished. So has the idea of ​​a map showing homeless people where it is safe to sleep without being swept up by police. The only site identified along Roseville Road in District 2 cannot accommodate the city’s thousands of homeless.

This is not progress, it is stagnation.

With the Camp Resolution experiment having ended in failure and acrimony, compassionate alternatives are few and far between. Sacramento police kept the media away Monday, saying it was a crime scene and that crossing their tape would result in an arrest.

One wonders how many of Sacramento’s homeless people died in the endless time the city faced, waiting for help that never came? One wonders how many former Camp Resolution residents will suffer medical and mental trauma from the city’s sweep Monday.

Camp Resolution, once a great hope for our city and perhaps a new way to deal with homelessness, is now nothing more than a failed experiment – ​​with plenty to blame.