Property owner sues Sacramento after homeless people broke into vacant commercial building
The owner of a vacant property just south of downtown Sacramento is suing the city over the homeless crisis.
Bugatto Sacramento Properties, which owns the lot at the corner of 5th Street and 1st Avenue, sued the city Monday in federal court. The corporation, owned by Eugene and Michael Bugatto, is based in San Francisco, according to state records from 2021, the most recent year the company submitted them.
The corporation has owned the property, which used to house five buildings, since 1998, the lawsuit states. The main building was used for storing frozen fish and distributing them to wholesale customers. The property now has several vacant buildings, as well as a vacant lot.
Since 2016, homelessness in the area has been worsening, partly because the city opened the now-closed sanctioned camping site at nearby Miller Park, the lawsuit states. When people were turned away from Miller Park because it was full, they would sometimes set up camp at the vacant lot, the suit states.
Unhoused people have also broken into the buildings, sprayed them with graffiti, and set them on fire, the suit states.
The owners asked the city for police to remove the homeless, and the city largely ignored the petitions, the suit states.
City spokesman Tim Swanson did not immediately provide a comment on the lawsuit. The city cleared an encampment at the site in 2023, responding to complaints from nearby residents.
The city then issued code violations for the building, deeming it a “dangerous vacant building,” starting in 2019, according to a city web page. It then closed the case earlier this month, determining work had been completed to address the issues.
“So, rather than respond to requests for law enforcement and address the root of the problem, the city instead would send its administrative employees to the property to catalog the damages caused by the vagrants and trespassers, cite and fine plaintiff and charge for the city’s employee time,” the suit states.
The city in 2021 sought an order to demolish the building, which the owner contested, the suit states. The city then ordered the owner to rebuild not as its previous use, but as housing, per a new city planning document called the West Broadway Specific Plan. The owner then had to shut down its business. In 2022 it entered into an agreement to sell the property to a buyer for $5.1 million, conditioned on the buyer obtaining city approvals to construct housing.
The city issued a demolition permit earlier this month for the building, at 2601 5th St. in Upper Land Park, according to a city web page.
As another condition, the city is requiring the buyer pay to extend 6th Street to the north, even though another building blocks it from connecting to Broadway, the lawsuit states. The loss of land caused the owner to decrease the purchase price by about $1 million.
The lawsuit claims unlawful taking of property and inverse condemnation. It seeks monetary damages as well as for the city to allow the owner to sell the property without the buyer paying to extend the road.
The area where the property sits has been historically industrial, but is increasingly residential. In addition to the longstanding public housing communities of Alder Grove and New Helvetia, there is also the Mill at Broadway, targeted to first-time home buyers, and a new 49-unit market-rate apartment complex planned.
Homeless people have previously told The Sacramento Bee they sometimes trespass in vacant buildings partly in order to get relief from life-threatening heat and cold. At least a dozen homeless people have frozen to death in Sacramento since 2021, according to coroner records.
There are over 2,500 people and 820 families on the wait list for one of the city of Sacramento’s roughly 1,300 shelter beds, according to city data.
