How's Sacramento's Camp Resolution devolved into the blame game

Two women stand together in front of a sign for "Camp Resolution."

By Ryan FonsecaStaff Writer

June 12, 2024 6:30 AM PT

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, June 12. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

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Sacramento sanctioned a self-governing homeless camp and agreed to find its residents permanent housing. How’d it get so messy?

An experiment underway in Sacramento that challenges how cities approach homeless encampments has become a cautionary tale.

A unique lease between a homelessness union representing an encampment on Colfax Street and the city states that city officials cannot close the self-governed Camp Resolution until every resident has been placed in “individual permanent durable housing.”

Advocates hoped the historic agreement could become a model for other cities.

Instead, they say Sacramento’s leaders are sabotaging the agreement and failing to deliver on their promise to house Camp Resolution’s roughly 50 residents, who are mostly women older than 40. The city has housed only two in over a year. Officials moved to close the camp in late March, as regular readers of this newsletter learned in April. Camp residents and their advocates vowed to fight back.

A couple of weeks later, homeless activists sued the city, accusing it of violating and undermining the lease.

After a long stalemate, the city rescinded its notice to terminate the lease on June 5, meaning the camp lives to fight another day.

Finger-pointing over a zoning variance

When Camp Resolution was first sanctioned, residents and activists breathed a sigh of relief. It meant no more encampment sweeps, and just about as much stability as you can get while living on the streets.

That relief depended on a zoning variance that allowed people to live on the site, a former maintenance yard.

The city applied for that variance, and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board granted it in January 2022, with an expiration date of June 1, 2024.

Just under a year after Camp Resolution’s lease took effect, the city stated in a letter that the camp’s lease would terminate because of the expiration of that zoning variance and ordered residents to vacate the site by May 16.

The city later said Safe Ground Sacramento failed to request the variance extension.

“The residents of Camp Resolution are facing a critical situation created by the actions — and the puzzling inaction — of the people who claim to be their advocates,” Sacramento City Atty. Susana Alcala Wood wrote in a statement last month.

Mark Merin, a local civil rights lawyer and chairman of the board for Safe Ground Sacramento, told me he tried to do just that, but the water control board said he needed authorization from the city.

“I asked if they would authorize me,” Merin said. “They said no.”

That changed after the Sacramento Homeless Union filed its lawsuit last month. Merin said he was granted authority by the city and requested an extension from the water board, which was quickly granted.

The city later rescinded its plan to close the camp. The extension expires Dec. 1.

Can the promise of Camp Resolution endure?

A photo illustration of a map of Sacramento on a crumpled cardboard sign.

Camp Resolution’s residents still don’t have running water or electricity, which the city pins on Merin’s group for failing to facilitate.

Merin said Safe Ground Sacramento has tried to work with the city to get water and power flowing, but officials have refused to help.

He’s hopeful his organization can work with the city in the coming months to secure access to those necessities, and “negotiate some kind of orderly transition into housing.” He added that Safe Ground Sacramento has proposed building low-income housing on the site for camp residents.

“All we need to do is get a little bit of support from the city,” Merin said. “This is a demonstration project. It’s another way for cities to deal with the burgeoning homeless population without having to spend an arm and a leg to hire all kinds of people.”

City officials did not respond to questions about Merin’s version of events.

‘We don’t trust the city’

Not all the advocates are on the same page. Anthony Prince, lead counsel for the Sacramento Homeless Union, bristles at the idea that residents could temporarily relocate while housing is built on the site.

“We’ve learned the hard way that when the city says that they’re going to do something for people and it’s going to be temporary … all that ends up being is a voucher for a few weeks or being shoved into a shelter or maybe a waiting list for Section 8,” Prince said. “It might be legally classified as an offer of housing, but that’s not housing.”

The union is not dropping its lawsuit against the city either, Prince said, because the fate of the camp remains in jeopardy.

“We don’t trust the city,” he told me.

And there’s an additional concern: Triple-digit heat radiates off the pavement where residents live in vehicles and 17 city-provided trailers, which Prince said came without working air-conditioning. For him, city leaders’ dealings with Camp Resolution over the last year-plus reveals their hypocrisy.

“It’s so inconsistent for them to talk about how they’re worried about [residents’] health and safety and then they decline even to bring water,” he said. “We’re going to make the place habitable, but again, our commitment is not to have people there forever. It’s to use it as a staging ground for permanent housing.”

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Commentary and opinions

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Today’s great reads

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