Sacramento's homeless rally against state senator's proposed agency

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After overcoming homelessness, Kristy Smith became an advocate for others, designing tools to help Sacramento residents get off the street and into permanent shelter. A new bill would shut down her work.

Smith, along with 16 homeless and 15 formerly homeless people, signed a letter from the Sacramento Homeless Union last week opposing a bill in the California state Senate that creates a new regional agency for housing and homelessness. Smith worries that the new agency will limit the participation of homeless people in decision making and roll back Sacramento’s progress.

“If you dismantle it all and give all the power to one source, you are setting everything up for failure,” Smith said. “Everything that has been built will start to crumble.”

Smith sits on committees at Sacramento Steps Forward and the Continuum of Care, two of the region’s entities for supporting homeless people through temporary shelter and permanent housing services.

If passed, California state Sen. Angelique Ashby’s Senate Bill 802 would end Sacramento Steps Forward and the Continuum of Care to create the Sacramento Area Housing and Homelessness Agency. The agency would have a single governing board composed of members from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and Sacramento, Elk Grove, Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Citrus Heights city councils.

Since the proposal was unveiled last month, the Board of Supervisors and all of the named cities’ mayors have written letters opposing the bill.

Smith said she is concerned by the limitations on board seats, both in terms of quantity and qualification.

As a formerly homeless person and survivor of domestic violence, Smith is part of the Continuum of Care’s People With Lived Expertise Committee which helps identify challenges facing homeless people. She worries that Ashby’s elimination of the Continuum of Care and committees like PWLEC will reduce the power of affected populations.

“I am one of those people who you are wanting to protect and wanting to uplift,” Smith said. “But yet you are wanting to dismantle it without making sure you have spoken with everybody.”

Ashby said Thursday that she has spoken about her bill with homeless people and business owners in Sacramento.

“I’ve had dozens and dozens of conversations with community members over the years on homelessness, but in particular on this bill over the last couple of weeks, and the average person out there in the community is really grateful to hear we are doing something different from what we have been trying,” Ashby said.

She noted that the proposed agency would have an advisory committee including at least one individual currently or formerly experiencing homelessness and at least one individual who is a current resident of public housing or low-income housing.

The agency’s joint mission of combating homelessness and affordable housing is a sticking point for Felicia Clark. Clark, who has been homeless for two years and three months, is not a member of the Sacramento Homeless Union but signed onto the letter because she worries about a single agency handling homeless services and housing development.

Currently, Sacramento Steps Forward and the Continuum of Care are responsible for the annual Point-In-Time count which tracks Sacramento’s homeless population, coordinating entry to Sacramento’s shelters, managing federal funds for housing and administering the Homeless Management Information System — a localized database of people who are homeless or at-risk of becoming homeless.

Affordable housing development is managed by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. SHRA is a joint powers authority created in 1982 to manage city, county and federal housing funds and administer programs like rental assistance and community revitalization projects.

Ashby’s proposed agency would merge the responsibilities of SHRA with the Continuum of Care and Sacramento Steps Forward, as well as the city-led efforts of Sacramento, Elk Grove, Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Citrus Heights.

Clark thinks that is too many responsibilities for a single board to take on, and without a board that is specifically dedicated to homelessness, diverse causes and experiences of homelessness may go unaddressed.

“There’s such a wide category of homeless people that not everybody falls into the same box,” Clark said.

But Ashby believes the board will have the necessary bandwidth. She pointed to the success of other large joint powers authorities, like Sacramento’s library system, in managing facilities and funds across the region.

While Sacramento County saw a 28.7% decrease in people experiencing homelessness from 2022 to 2024 according to the most recent Point-In-Time count, Ashby said the region requires a new approach to homelessness.

“I don’t think anyone in Sacramento who is paying attention to this closely believes that the system is working. And if they do believe that, they’re inaccurate,” Ashby said.

For Ginger Gibbons, though, the system is finally generating results.

Gibbons has been homeless for seven years. While she used to live in an RV, she said it was towed by the city, and for the last two years, she has moved around the city’s various encampments. She spends much of her day helping other homeless people find shelter or housing opportunities, and recently assisted an older friend get into an apartment managed by SHRA.

“I’m finally finding things through housing that would actually help the homeless people out here,” Gibbons said. “And I know as soon as they start combining, and it’s all going to go away.”

While Gibbons thinks Sacramento Steps Forward is flawed, she does not think the solution is increasing the role of city councils or the Board of Supervisors.

“We don’t trust the police, code enforcement, the city, the county or anything. So if you get them involved, more than likely you’re going to have less people wanting help because they’re giving us tickets and arresting us. So if they control it, we’re not going to want anything to do with it, because we don’t trust them anymore,” Gibbons said.

“I would rather die out here than trust them now.”

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