Sacramento DA sues city over homeless encampments

Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho said the city is seeing a “collapse into chaos”

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Sacramento prosecutor has filed a lawsuit against California’s capital city for failing to clean up homeless encampments.

Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho says his office has asked the city to enforce sidewalk obstruction laws and to establish more professionally operated camping areas.

During a news conference in Sacramento on Tuesday, he announced the suit.

According to Ho, the city is experiencing a “collapse into chaos” and a “erosion of everyday life.”

According to data from the annual Point in Time count, Sacramento County will have nearly 9,300 homeless people in 2022. This was an increase of 67% over 2019. Unsheltered homeless people account for roughly three-quarters of the county’s homeless population.

Homeless tent encampments have grown visibly in cities across the United States, particularly in California, which is home to nearly one-third of the country’s unhoused people.

In August, the prosecutor threatened to file charges against city officials if changes were not implemented within 30 days.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said at the time that Ho was politicizing the issue rather than working with the city.

According to Steinberg, the city has added 1,200 emergency shelter beds, passed ordinances to protect sidewalks and schools, and created more affordable housing. He went on to say that the city is attempting to avoid “the futile trap of just moving people endlessly from one block to the next.”

People’s frustrations are “absolutely justified,” he says, but Ho’s actions are a “performative distraction.”

“The city needs real partnership from the region’s leaders, not politics and lawsuits,” he says.

Ho, who was elected in 2022 after campaigning on addressing the city’s homelessness crisis, said he has asked the city to share real-time data on available shelter beds with law enforcement.

“This is a rare — a rare — opportunity for us to effectuate meaningful, efficient means of getting the critically, chronically unhoused off the streets,” Ho said.

Ho stated that he supports a variety of solutions, including the enforcement of existing laws and the establishment of new programs to provide services to people suffering from addiction or mental illness. He stated his support for a statewide bond measure to fund the construction of more treatment facilities. That issue will be decided by voters next year.

A lawsuit filed by a homeless advocacy group resulting in an order from a federal judge temporarily prohibiting the city from clearing homeless encampments during extreme heat complicated the dispute between the district attorney and the city. That order has now been lifted, but the group wants it to be extended.

The homeless coalition’s attorney also filed a complaint with the state bar this month, alleging that Ho abused his power by pressuring the city to clear encampments while the order was in place.

At Ho’s news conference, residents testified that the city is not providing resources to address homelessness.

Critics claim that encampments are unsanitary and illegal, and that they prevent children, the elderly, and the disabled from using public spaces such as sidewalks. Allowing people to deteriorate outside, they argue, is neither humane nor compassionate.

However, homeless advocates argue that more investment in affordable housing and services is needed to address the crisis, and that camping bans and encampment sweeps traumatize homeless people.