CA FWD’s Voices of Shared Prosperity blog series amplifies the stories of Californians who are committing their time and talent to solutions that embrace equity, environmental sustainability, and economic opportunity.
This year, we’re highlighting leaders who are making a difference in the greater Sacramento region, leading up to the 2024 California Economic Summit taking place in Sacramento on October 8-10.
After several years of experiencing large increases in the number of unhoused people, the Greater Sacramento area received some good news. In the past two years, homelessness has decreased by 29% according to the Point in Time Count conducted earlier this year. But that still leaves more than 6,600 people with no shelter or a place to sleep each night.
Sacramento ACT (SacACT), a multi-racial, multi-faith advocacy organization pushing for social change, is advocating for both the County and City of Sacramento, and the local Continuum of Care, to develop a comprehensive plan to not only end homelessness, but to prevent more people from falling into homelessness.
“Our homeless team is much more advocacy oriented than some other teams within SacACT in part because the homeless people themselves can’t organize as effectively or sustainably as ordinary citizens,” said SacACT’s Mike Jaske. “Many homeless people have mental health issues or substance abuse issues, so we’re sort of coming in from the outside to advocate for them.”
SacACT has long worked with all of the local agencies in Sacramento to curb homelessness, but recently shifted its focus from reacting to short term issues toward long-term issues necessary for a collaborative comprehensive plan targeted at ending homelessness in the region.
Jaske adds, “You have to do planning, and you have to do it collaboratively, you have to set out specific tangible targets that you have to accomplish and this last round the guidance (from California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Grant Program) is really beginning to emphasize that we’re going to be held accountable for achieving those targets, those goals, whatever they happen to be.”
Ending homelessness is a lengthy process, not only to find housing, but also to transition people into housing and back into society. “There’s really the nexus with homeless people who need, in addition to housing, specialized kinds of support and frequently those are coupled together in what we call permanent supportive housing,” explained Jaske. “After some years in permanent supportive housing, a certain fraction of people recover and are able to move on to something less intensive so they can move to an ordinary apartment.” He added that they still may need rental subsidies and periodic mental health support.
The region’s unhoused population is also facing a new challenge in light of the June U.S. Supreme Court decision that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people. SacACT issued a statement criticizing the “Grants Pass” decision which contained the following, “Falling in line with a disheartening pattern of recent years, the ruling will embolden local and state governments to move to criminalize poverty and dehumanize the most vulnerable members of our society.”
Jaske said of the local impact of the ruling, “The outcome of Grants Pass has been that too many local jurisdictions are either adopting new ordinances or being free to implement existing ones that had been set aside by prior circuit court rulings.” He continued, “We were aspiring to tell our local elected government officials and their staffs that we don’t want you to exercise this freedom. We want you to continue to be on the more compassionate side of how resources are allocated.”
Jaske is hopeful for the future. “The corner has been turned; we still don’t have a completely collaborative comprehensive plan to end homelessness. It’s obviously going to take five or six years at a bare minimum even with lots of resources because of the lead time to build housing and so forth.” He added, “But we do have more collaboration, we do have more scope, and people are thinking bigger.”
Gabby Trejo, Executive Director of SacACT, will be speaking at the ‘Regional Stewardship in Action’ panel at next week’s California Economic Summit. You can join SacACT and be part of the conversation to create a California that works for everyone by attending the California Economic Summit on October 8-10 in Sacramento.
