Why does Sacramento County want city land? It should be to do more about homelessness | Opinion

An eastern edge of Sacramento juts out like a lone finger on a map, stretching from Watt Avenue down Auburn Boulevard to the exit ramps off Interstate 80. This land is the latest test of relations between the city and Sacramento County, which has taken the first steps toward annexing the land away from the city and into the county.

The underlying motivations go far beyond jurisdictional lines. Some neighbors last month sued the city for its operation of a year-old homeless respite center on city-owned land. Other neighbors have some real complaints about the condition of a city-run regional park.

Opinion

The neighbors who want the homeless shelter to vanish would not like any conceivable deal that would emerge. But there is a good-government reason for this finger of land to be the impetus for a much broader conversation about both homeless and park services.

County supervisors on a 4-0 vote adopted a resolution seeking the city’s consent to review this stretch of Auburn Boulevard before the Local Agency Formation Commission, the county’s judicial body for all border issues.

“It is literally a peninsula that sticks out there,” said board Chair Rich Desmond. “An inherent challenge is the city of Sacramento is not accountable to the citizens surrounding this peninsula,” who all live in the unincorporated county.

Neighbors who testified at the hearing largely spoke about the condition of the city’s Del Paso Regional Park, which occupies the easternmost section of this peninsula.

“For the last 25 years at least, there has been no incentive on the city’s part to invest in the park east of Watt Avenue,” said Doug Ose, the former third district Congressman who lives in the area and remains a neighborhood activist. “There are no city residents that live within two miles of this location. None. Zero.”

“It is too far from the city,” said neighbor Charles Duckworth. “Too far from the police. Too far to maintain.”

Juliette Porro, who lives nearby, said: “Del Paso does have the potential to be the kind of park and nature area that I would take my kids to” “All it needs is leaders who take care. It is time for someone else to be in charge.”

But in all the careful messaging, there is clearly a community kabuki going on here. At this supervisor’s meeting, what was rarely mentioned was a city-run facility for the homeless on this finger of land. And if the county were to ever annex this land back from the city, undoubtedly the supervisors would hear an earful about trying to somehow get rid of it.

Porro and Duckworth, as examples, both happen to be among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on August 17 in Sacramento County Superior Court that contends that a city homeless shelter in the peninsula is illegal.

Hope Cooperative since last September has run the 50-bed Outreach and Engagement Center at 3615 Auburn Boulevard. Respite Center guests are provided meals, showers, sleeping accommodations, case management, and referrals to services and shelters,” explains Hope on its website. Residents can spend 23 hours every day at the site.

The center got no worse than mixed reviews from neighbors shortly after it opened late last year. But there is clearly opposition, leaving the county supervisors to carefully navigate through their constituents’ objections to homeless services as they understandably seek a dialogue with the city.

“This action is not intended to impact the city shelter that is city property,” said Desmond. However, he said, “It does influence why we are having that discussion today.”

No supervisor took the opportunity to defend the city, the need to provide homeless services, Hope Cooperative or this facility. Sometimes what isn’t said is as important as what is.

Meanwhile, the neighbors/plaintiffs are claiming that Measure O, approved by city voters in 2022, precludes a homeless shelter operating on the site.

The lawsuit reads: “The city is prohibited from establishing and maintaining a homeless shelter within 1000 feet of certain identified uses: schools, playgrounds, as well as several other key places set forth in the ordinance such as distance from streams, etc., or within parks...Plaintiffs have no other recourse but to file this lawsuit and seek court intervention.”

The litigation, sadly, repeats a familiar message directed by neighborhoods to Sacramento City Hall: Make the homeless issue somebody else’s problem, somewhere else.

Both the city and the county need to add shelter capacity on a scale that meets the homeless challenge. The need is in the thousands, not hundreds, of new needed shelter spaces. With more than 9,000 people estimated as homeless in Sacramento County, that is what we are all up against.

The county has laudably opened a new small-home shelter program off Florin Road, and it is planning more shelter opportunities in North Highlands along Watt Avenue.

However, the city needs the county to match its efforts above and beyond the limited partnership and develop even more homeless-managed areas. Likewise, the county has a solid case that it can better manage Del Paso Park given how it is surrounded by its own constituents.

All local governments have to work together to make progress on homelessness and the public should hold them equally accountable, from the city to the county, to the district attorney, to the courts and to the state.

The coming debate over this peninsula of city land along Auburn Boulevard hopefully leads to a new and bigger partnership that benefits the region, the neighborhood and this regional park.