Sacramento celebrates drop in homeless population. Advocacy groups remain skeptical.
SACRAMENTO — Sacramento leaders are celebrating the city's latest point-in-time count that shows a dramatic drop in the number of people living on the streets. However, some advocacy groups say the numbers are hard to believe.
During the last count, Sacramento County had more homeless people than San Francisco. Now, they say the number has dropped 29% from 9,000 people to around 6,600. Additionally, there was a 41% drop in the amount of unsheltered homeless people and a 2% increase in sheltered homeless.
We got the chance to talk with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg about the numbers. They look good on paper, but in reality, there will still be critics.
Steinberg didn't dispute that, but he said he's looking past the blame and taking this as a small victory with more work to be done.
"These numbers are obviously something that the city would be happy to see, but does this mean we can sit back and say things are better?" Marlee Ginter asked Steinberg.
"This is not a declaration of victory, by any means," Steinberg said. "This is a day to take stock of the progress and to commit to continuing to do what we have been doing and even elevate what we have been doing so that we can bring these numbers down even farther."
"You will still have business owners who say, 'This is scaring my customers away,' [and] homeowners who say, "I don't feel safe being in my home because there is an encampment right there.' So, there's still a lot of work to be done, in reality," Ginter said.
"We have an obligation to provide relief to every individual who is suffering, every business that is being affected by this and every neighbor that is being affected by this. Now, not only do we have good and better numbers, obviously, but I think there's a sense around the city that things look and feel a little bit better and safer. Not completely, bu the tent encampments are not as large, and there aren't as many of them," Steinberg responded.
"We know that the county, specifically the DA, has come at you hard. Have you had a chance to speak to [Sacramento County] District Attorney Thien Ho about these [numbers]?" Ginter asked.
"No. I met with the DA many, many months ago and offered a partnership and he was not interested. Instead, he sued the city," Steinberg responded. "But this is what I will say. In the end, all of the political noise—the lawsuits, the initiatives—they do not produce a single bed. They do not produce a single housing unit. You know what does achieve all of those things? Actually working at the problem in a collaborative way."
So on that note, we had to get Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho's response to these numbers showing progress in the homeless crisis and take that back to the mayor.
"I think our community is moving in the right direction when it comes to dealing with our unhoused crisis. The real question is: what is moving it in the right direction?" Ho said. "First of all, under the last seven years under the mayor's leadership, homelessness increased by 250%. It wasn't until seven months ago when I sued the city, that we started moving in the right direction."
When we brought the DA's comments to the mayor, Steinberg responded with:
"That is factually untrue. The partnership agreement between the city and county was entered into two weeks before he was even sworn in as district attorney. It's just factually untrue. So, you could spin it however you want. Today's a great day."
The mayor's office said the city-county partnership on tackling the homeless situation was signed in December 2022. District Attorney Thien Ho then took office in 2023.
Homeless advocates have called the point-in-time count numbers "shocking" and a "red flag."
Angela Hassell, the executive director of Sacramento Loaves and Fishes, announced that the nonprofit does not have the "data to support such an extreme decline" and that numbers do not reflect the daily reality of what they see.
"We were pretty shocked to see the numbers be so much lower than the last point-in-time count," Hassell said.
Loaves and Fishes, which is the largest homeless survival services organization in the Sacramento area, tracks the number of people they serve yearly. Based on their data, Hassell said there was an increase from 2022 to 2023 of 6.4% or nearly 700 people who turned to the organization for services.
Hassell further explained that they've had a 20.5% increase in people who come to Loaves and Fishes for meals every day.
Loaves and Fishes served more people daily than last year, Hassell said and then added that she expects 2024 numbers will confirm that.
A statement from Loaves in Fishes said, in part:
"2023 and much of 2024 have proven to be riddled with sweeps. The natural consequence of these City & County actions has resulted in further mistrust and hiding. Unhoused people in our community have experienced countless broken promises, and our concern is that these 2024 PIT Count numbers will negatively impact future government funding for housing and supportive services."
Advocates at the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness said they see the "bird's eye view" provided by the numbers as an inaccurate representation of the daily need.
"Count is a methodology that depends on visible homelessness. People go around in the community and they literally count who they see," said Niki Jones, the director of the coalition. "So when we have policies of displacement of folks—from visible spaces, from visible encampments—we're going to have a decrease in the amount of people that we are able to count."
Jones said that while numbers are part of the count, the daily experience is a human one. Not being able to connect with, or see people who live unhoused in Sacramento can isolate them from services—not just the point-in-time count.