Sacramento case study: Low-barrier housing fails homeless long term

If Californian cities truly consider homeless citizens honored “guests,” wouldn’t they work to rehabilitate them instead of pushing short-term, accountability-free housing? The answer, says California Globe’s Katy Grimes, lies in pure politics: Costly development projects benefit legislators and their allies, while addiction and mental health treatment is challenging (and not as flashy) to implement. To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.

Sounding simpleminded, Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela weighed in:

“I’m excited to work with the Department of Community Response to begin welcoming guests to this site. Miller Park is uniquely suited to this task. We’re taking lessons learned from our experiences at WX and approaching this new site in a way that will function efficiently, safely, and provide mutual benefits to our unhoused neighbors and the surrounding community.”

“Unhoused neighbors.” None of my neighbors are living on Sacramento streets.

Miller Park is a city park, not a campground for “guest” “unhoused” vagrants high on meth and heroin.

As for the “lessons learned,” the Mayor and Councilwoman have learned nothing. They just keep repeating the same pointless moves – providing campgrounds on city streets and expensive, newly renovated motels and apartment “housing.” Never has meaningful, long-term help for the homeless been on the menu…

Remember, the amount of this project is $23.9 million.

What could that $23.9 million grant do for the city’s 11,000 homeless walking the streets at night, and sleeping on them during the day?

Residential treatment.

But treatment doesn’t spread the money around to favored contributors the way an expensive, multi-million dollar renovation or development project does.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe. Read the whole thing here.

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Image by David McKelvey