Sans camping ban, Sac rivers polluted by human excrement
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District Attorney Thien Ho recently filed a lawsuit against Sacramento for looking the other way on dangerous street encampments. The DA claims these homeless camps are contaminating Sactown's once-beautiful waterways (and leave residents shaken after violent encounters with folks who need mental health/substance abuse treatment). Below, Ho chats with the Globe to unpack our local homeless crisis.
DA Ho filed a lawsuit in September against the City of Sacramento for failing to abate the homeless crisis in the Capitol city. DA Ho said Sacramento’s homeless crisis has exploded by more than 250% in just 7 years – the exact amount of time Steinberg has been Mayor. …
“The rivers run through the heart of our community and they are the true natural jewels of our community,” Ho said at his press meeting at Steelhead Creek. “But over the last seven years, the city of Sacramento has allowed that natural jewel to be soiled, sullied and polluted.” …
In his lawsuit, DA Ho describes violence, intimidation, threats, assaults and attacks, as well as animal abuse and other actual crimes, homeless individuals have perpetrated on local home owners, business owners, and on each other. He tells of a resident who called police for four hours as a dog was screaming and crying loudly as it was getting beaten. She described it as the “noise of an animal screaming in torment.”
The dog was eventually found dead in the morning. Another day, another dog was found to have many broken bones due to the abuse it suffered by a zone inhabitant.
The lawsuit describes violence against home owners and business owners: “continuously perpetrated by and against zone residents. They have hit a woman with a skateboard rendering her bloody and unconscious and attempted to run people over with a car. During the winter of 2020, an unhoused subject with a running chainsaw was cruising around the victim’s neighborhood on a skateboard laughing and chasing people. In March of 2021, another zone inhabitant violently raped a woman and threatened others not to intervene.” …
District Attorney Ho provided the Globe a follow-up statement:
“On December 5, 2023, our office filed an amended complaint in our civil case against the City of Sacramento (Docket 23CV008658).
This amendment will allow us to focus on the violations that cause the most significant harm to the health and safety of everyone in the community, including environmental hazards that impact people and wildlife.
The initial complaint alleged three causes of action: 1) public nuisance, 2) private nuisance, and 3) inverse condemnation. After further investigation revealed that Sacramento waterways are being contaminated due to the City’s refusal to abate the nuisance caused by unhoused zones along the levees, we have replaced the last two causes of action with two new and more egregious violations: 1) Statutory Public Nuisance, and 2) Violation of Fish and Game Code section 5650 et.sec.
Before our office sued the City, I asked them to pass a daytime camping ban similar to the successful San Diego ordinance. Mayor Steinberg refused to do so. I am supportive of the leadership shown by Councilmembers Jennings, Guerra and 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.”
This article originally appeared in the California Globe. Read the whole thing here.
Related:
LA case study: Illegal homeless camps pollute beach water with “toxic” bacteria
Claim: Zero carbon emissions not a zero-consequences approach for automobile industry
Opinion: If CA cares about “environmental racism,” we have to examine freeway pollution
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