Sacramento governments to open homeless shelter, mental health center under new agreement

The city and county of Sacramento finally have a deal outlining each agency’s responsibilities for addressing homelessness, potentially ending a long-running impasse between them.

The legally binding pact would commit the agencies to opening at least 200 more shelter beds, building a downtown behavioral health center and directing more mental health and substance abuse teams to visit encampments.

The two agencies are expected to vote on the agreement next week.

If it’s approved, the pact would clear the way for a city of Sacramento homeless ballot measure to take effect. The measure would allow local officials to remove more homeless encampments from public places. Measure O could also require the city to open additional beds beyond the ones in the agreement if the city has a budget a surplus.

The new agreement calls for 600 shelter beds, but that could include ones that are already open or approved.

It also includes a first-of-its-kind commitment from the county to operate a 200-bed new shelter in city limits if the city provides a “shovel ready site.” The city currently has to contract homeless shelter operations out to organizations like Volunteers of America, costing millions of dollars.

The city and county will operate multidisciplinary teams that will visit 20 encampments per month, the document said. The teams will consist of 10 behavioral health workers, who are already county employees but will be redirected to serving the areas inside the city limits, county spokeswoman Kim Nava said.

The teams will also include new 15 providers trained to connect people with Medi-Cal, the state-funded health care plan.

The team will lastly include 25 city Department of Community Response encampment workers. It’s unclear whether any of the community response workers will be new hires.

In addition, the county will open a new behavioral health center downtown at an unannounced location, the document said. It will be the fourth center serving the city jurisdiction which the county funds. The county will also add more substance use disorder residential treatment beds.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg has previously described the mental health services in the agreement as groundbreaking for the city and county.

The agreement would cost the county $10 million, including $5 million for the new behavioral services center, and $5 million to operate the new city shelter, Nava said. It’s unclear how much it would cost the city.

City leaders called for a binding agreement on homelessness as they debated what became the homeless ballot measure, Measure O. They worried the measure could strain the city’s finances, and they wanted the county to commit to a share of the work.

Daniel Conway, a lead proponent of the homeless ballot measure, called the agreement a “critical step.”

“When we launched this effort a year ago, our goal was to bring the city of Sacramento and Sacramento County together to address homelessness holistically and humanely,” Conway, chief of staff to former Mayor Kevin Johnson, posted to Twitter Thursday. “This agreement is a critical step in that direction. Now Sacramento can be a leader. Thanks to everyone who supported Measure O.”

Measure O will go into effect in early January at the latest. The measure will allow the city to sweep camps of four or more unrelated people on public property even without offering a shelter bed.

The agreement would be reviewed and updated annually, according to the document.

The county currently has about 1,300 shelter beds open and the city has about 1,100. There are roughly 9,300 homeless people in Sacramento County, and all shelter beds are typically full.

The council will consider the agreement at its 5 p.m. meeting Tuesday. The board will consider it at its 9:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday. It will be the last meeting before three new council members are sworn in on Dec. 13.

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