DA Thien Ho accuses Sacramento of allowing homeless to pollute waterways, endangering health

Three months after suing the city of Sacramento over its response to the homeless crisis, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho is accusing city officials of allowing homeless camps to pollute area waterways and endanger public health.

In a 48-page amended lawsuit filed Tuesday in Sacramento Superior Court, the D.A. says the city has allowed homeless residents to pollute the American and Sacramento rivers by dumping human waste and trash into waterways near their camps.

“The occupants of the camps utilize the waterways to wash clothing, cooking utensils, dishes and other personal items,” the complaint says. “The food waste and soaps and detergents used are deleterious to aquatics life.

“The occupants also utilize the waterways as open toilets and trash receptacles. The occupants of these zones daily discard, abandon and dispose of their human waste and other debris, garbage, refuse and substances deleterious to aquatic life.”

Ho, who toured one of the sites along Steelhead Creek on Tuesday with reporters, accused the city of creating a public nuisance and violating a state fish and game code section prohibiting the polluting of state waters.

“Sacramento is known as the river city, and that’s because the rivers run through the heart of our community, and they are the true natural jewels of our community,” Ho said as he stood near a series of camps along the creek, which flows into the Sacramento River.

“But over the last seven years, the city of Sacramento has allowed that natural jewel to be soiled and polluted.”

Parcel maps indicate some of the land where the camps are located is owned by a flood control agency, but the D.A.’s office said the property is within city limits and under the jurisdiction of city law enforcement.

“The city is responsible for enforcement of the laws within the city limits,” the D.A.’s office said. “The city’s failure to enforce the law has resulted in this environmental disaster.”

Ho and volunteers with the River City Waterway Alliance, who have removed hundreds of tons of refuse from campsites along area creeks, toured an abandoned site still littered with furniture, a wood-burning stove, pipes, a wheelchair and other refuse.

Roland Brady, a geologist and volunteer with the alliance, said such camps pose a threat to the habitat of the creek, with tarps, carpeting and even a homemade bridge of 50 shopping carts tied together and placed into the water.

By contrast, Ho took reporters downstream to a site controlled by the county where there were no signs of camps.

The tour was designed to highlight the claims made in the D.A.’s latest filing against the city, and marks the latest in a series of aggressive actions by Ho against city officials, including Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is accused in the new filing of stymieing efforts to address illegal camps through the use of orders the suit refers to as “Darrell’s Directives.”

The city has denounced Ho’s actions — including his warning that he is investigating “criminal liability” over city actions — as political grandstanding designed to bolster a potential run for attorney general against Steinberg.

Ho denied Tuesday that he has any intention of running for attorney general, and insisted that he is acting out of compassion for the homeless and for community members affected by the campsites and what he says is the city’s inaction.

“The city of Sacramento has allowed this to be here for 12 years,” Ho said as he stood above a camp inhabited by a man called Hoss that includes a generator and air conditioner and is fenced. “We should find shelter for him.

“Just not here.”

Ho added that he believes “there are plenty of shelter spaces.”

“There’s 102 acres that the city spent $12 million on and they promised that they will use it for homelessness,” he said. “Why not put this gentleman out at that location?”

Steinberg’s office wasted no time in responding to Ho’s tour, issuing a statement decrying the D.A.’s “media stunt” and noting that while the D.A. was along the creek officials in Sacramento were making progress in finding shelter for the homeless.

“In politics, they say there are two kinds of people: work horses and show horses,” Steinberg said in a statement. “While the DA was traipsing around on a levee with the press in tow this morning, the city and county of Sacramento were jointly taking an important step toward actually getting people off the street.

“The county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a Safe Stay sleeping cabin community on Stockton Boulevard with cabins allotted to the city by the state. We are also working with Governor Newsom’s office to place an additional 175 sleeping cabins in a county Safe Stay community on Watt Avenue.

“These developments represent real progress on our partnership. I am grateful to our partners at the county and in the Governor’s Office. We are now up to thousands of new and planned beds since 2017. Enough of the show.”

Ho’s legal threats have not extended to the county, which the D.A. says has acted quickly to remove camps from the American River Parkway and capital creeks, and he stopped at a county site Tuesday to note there were no camps while there were many upstream on city property.

Brady, the geologist, and another alliance volunteer, Crystal Tobias, said the county has been proactive when called to remove camps on county property.

“The county removes the tents, the rangers give them a notice of abatement,” Brady said. “There are no established camps from West El Camino to the Sacramento River.

“The county’s right on it.”

By contrast, he said, calls to the city’s 311 number seeking help in removing camps elicit no response.

Nearby, two residents of a campsite on city property watched as the parade of SUVs and media vehicles passed by during the tour, and said later they had lived in that spot for five years with no one asking them to leave.

The couple, who gave their names as Doc and Pepper, said they live at the camp with their four dogs and that they and most campers are careful not to dump trash into the creeks.

“He needs to get his facts straight,” Doc said of the D.A. “Homeless people throwing trash in the river is not as big as he would make it out to be.”

Ho already has accused the city of ignoring health and safety threats posed by homeless camps throughout city limits.

His latest filing expands his complaint to include camps near Arcade, Dry, Steelhead, Magpie and Morrison creeks that run through the city and into the Sacramento and American rivers.

“Since August 2021, volunteers have spent over 2,200 hours removing over 206,000 pounds of debris from Arcade Creek which includes items such as mattresses, tarps, clothing, sleeping bags, blankets, fast food containers, liquor bottles, heaters, microwaves, lamps, refrigerators, tube televisions, kitchen appliances and utensils, crack pipes, hypodermic syringes, shopping carts, wood pallets and propane tanks,” Ho wrote in the latest filing. “Per lead volunteers, this was but the tip of the iceberg with the amount of trash and debris still within the channel of Arcade Creek.”

In a statement to The Sacramento Bee, Ho wrote that his latest complaint stems from “further investigation (that) revealed that Sacramento waterways are being contaminated due to the city’s refusal to abate the nuisance caused by unhoused zones along the levees.”

He added that the new complaint alleges “more egregious violations” of statutory public nuisance and violation of the fish and game code.

He also wrote that the city has refused to work with him to address the crisis, but that he supports a recent proposal by council members Eric Guerra and Rick Jennings to create a citywide ban on daytime camping.

“Before our office sued the city, I asked them to pass a daytime camping ban similar to the successful San Diego ordinance,” Ho said. “Mayor Steinberg refused to do so.

“I am supportive of the leadership shown by Councilmembers Jennings, Guerra and (Lisa) Kaplan in proposing this new law. It is a long overdue step in the right direction to address our unhoused crisis on the streets and along our rivers.”