A new statewide task force aims to clear homeless encampments and connect residents with services, in California’s 10 largest cities within the next 30 days.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new statewide task force is focused on removing homeless camps.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced the creation of the SAFE Task Force (State Action for Facilitation on Encampments) in a news release Friday.
The goal is to quickly remove camps on state rights-of-way and help connect people with wrap-around supportive services and shelter – all within the next 30 days. It’ll target camps on state property in California’s 10 largest cities—including Sacramento.
“Great, we could use the help,” Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said in an interview with ABC10. “Let’s face it, homelessness is a number one issue in Sacramento and cities across California, and we can’t do it alone, you know. It takes the city of Sacramento, the county, the state, heck, even the federal government, too.”
He welcomes help from the new SAFE Task Force, which brings together resources from a variety of agencies and departments, including the California Office of Emergency Services, CHP, the Interagency on Homelessness and California Health and Human Services.
“At the end of the day, we are all in this together,” McCarty said.
Nikki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, has serious concerns about the new task force.
“The timing is unrealistic; we’re not going to magically have the services to support people’s transition out of unsheltered homelessness in 30 days,” she said. “The idea that we have the infrastructure, the service system, available to do what he’s talking about, it’s all window dressing. It is all window dressing for enforcement.”
She thinks the Governor’s task force is more about sweeping encampments than actually helping those experiencing homelessness.
“Gavin’s priority is to remove visible encampments in order to please the people who are uncomfortable with seeing the poverty,” Jones said. “We need to address the root issues instead of the visual aesthetic symptoms.”
In Friday’s news release, Newsom said he is pairing “urgency with dignity—restoring safe, usable public spaces while providing care for Californians living in dangerous encampments.”
Dr. Margot Kushel is a professor of medicine at UCSF, where she directs the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
“We all want these encampments to go away. We all want people to be housed. I think we share those goals,” she said.
She’s hopeful about the Governor’s new SAFE Task Force – if it follows the research, she said.
“We know that you can very effectively resolve encampments by bringing the services and the housing that people in those encampments need,” Kushel said.
However, it takes time to build trust between people in the camps and those offering services, and she worries 30 days isn’t enough.
“Let the community control the timing and trust, because if you offer them real things, they will accept it,” Kushel said.
Mayor McCarty said Sacramento is expanding its shelter capacity. Just this week, he unveiled an additional 135 new tiny home transitional housing shelters going up at the city’s Roseville Road campus.
“They’re funded in large part through a partnership through the Governor’s encampment program a year-and-a-half ago, two years ago,” McCarty said. “So, you know, this is welcome news to help us clean up encampments but also connect people that are homeless to services and shelter facilities.”
Also this week, the city enacted a ban on camping outside city hall. Jones said it was traumatic for the unhoused community there.
On September 16, McCarty said, the city is going to unveil four new locations throughout the city – he called them micro sites – where more housing will be built.
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