Miller Park "safe ground" camping site sees 60 additional tents to help the homeless
SACRAMENTO -- In support of the homeless community, 60 tents are being added to Sacramenton's temporary "safe ground" camping site in Miller Park, where there are currently 17 trailers.
Tents, which were previously offered, were removed for safety reasons in January due to severe storms.
At the request of Mayor Darrell Steinberg and with the support of Councilmember Katie Valenzuela, tents are now added back to the site.
Valenzuela said, "Since launching the first safe site in District 4, we've been able to get hundreds of people off the street and connected to services, with a significant percentage of those guests exited from homelessness entirely. While these sites are not an optimal long-term solution to the crisis, they are a necessary triage step during the interim while we focus on increasing our affordable housing stock."
During the operation period of the Miller Park tent program from February 2022 to January 2023, 376 people made use of the program and 142 of these people moved on to positive exit destinations which included congregate shelters or moving back with their family.
These trailers and tents are temporary while the city and county implement their new partnership agreement, which would include longer-term sources of emergency shelter.
Steinberg said, "Temporary facilities like Miller Park will make it easier for the city and county to deliver services and help people find temporary and permanent housing. We will aggressively pursue more safe ground in the weeks ahead. By clearly identifying where people can camp, we can more effectively clean those city corridors where it is both unsafe and unhealthy for people to live."
953 homeless people have used the safe ground program since its launch in April 2021.