Sacramento orders tight-knit homeless community, Camp Resolution, to close next month

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The city of Sacramento has ordered Camp Resolution — a first-of-it-kind close community of unhoused people living in city trailers — to close next month.

Assistant City Manager Mario Lara sent a letter March 28 to Mark Merin of Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc., which leases the site from the city. A state document allowing people to live in trailers on the site despite air contamination, expires June 1. Due to that, the city is ordering all residents to move off the city-owned North Sacramento lot by May 16.

Merin is trying to persuade city staff to let the residents stay longer at the two-acre site, at Colfax Street and Arden Way, he said. If that doesn’t work, he hopes the city will open another safe parking site in North Sacramento where residents can move after the May 16 eviction date.

The city has met with Merin to discuss the possibility of a new safe parking site, city spokesman Tim Swanson said.

“The city remains committed to helping unsheltered individuals connect with all available resources and to working with community partners to explore new ways to address the ongoing homelessness crisis,” Swanson said.

The city in 2022 signed a variance with the Central Valley Regional Water Board that allowed people to camp in trailers on the site, but prohibited them to camp in tents, due to vapor contamination. The type of contamination that’s present is not harmful to people in vehicles because they’re raised off the ground, the water board said at the time. Some people lived in tents anyway, prompting District Attorney Thien Ho to threaten to sue the city. People are no longer living in tents on the site.

Swanson said the city cannot comment further about the site because of Ho’s threat of prosecution.

Patrick Pulupa, executive officer for the Central Valley Regional Water Board, said it was ultimately the city’s decision to close Camp Resolution.

“We understand that enforcement of the variance conditions was difficult for both the city and the occupants of the site and respect the city’s decision to close the safe parking site,” Pulupa said in an email. “Our response to this situation has always focused on safeguarding the health and safety of the people living at Camp Resolution. We will pledge to work with the city as it looks for alternate sites where vapor contamination is not a concern.”

Where could new homeless site open?

If a new site does open, it would likely be at one in the document the city released in 2021, which listed several vacant North Sacramento city-owned properties.

The plan included a city-owned property at Eleanor and Traction avenues, and another at Lexington Street and Dixieanne Avenue. Both lots are within two miles of Camp Resolution and remain vacant. The city’s cost would be between $400,000 and $1.6 million to prepare either site for trailers, Public Works Director Ryan Moore told the City Council in 2022.

Given the looming projected $58 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1, the council might not approve that expense.

Shoun Thao, who’s temporarily serving as the council member for the district until Dec. 10, said he has asked the city for data on the success of Camp Resolution, including data on the number of people who got into housing after spending time there. After he receives the data, he will decide if he wants to explore opening a new safe parking site in the district, he said.

Camp Resolution is unique because it is self-governed, meaning instead of a costly contractor, it’s run by the homeless people who live there. That means there are no day to day operating costs to the city, unlike the shelter at X Street and Alhambra Boulevard, which costs the city about $10 million a year. Camp Resolution has a strong community feeling, where family dinners and poetry nights are frequent and large art pieces line the fencing that surrounds it, including one that reads, “COME MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS.”

The camp was also created in a unique way. When Mayor Darrell Steinberg in 2021 released a list of potential shelter sites, it included the lot, where a tent encampment had sprung up.

Upon learning the site was a homeless shelter option, homeless people, many of whom were women, formed a movement to occupy the site. The city threatened them with police eviction but later agreed to let them stay put. The city later provided 33 trailers, which lack air conditioning and heat but do provide a locking door and roof.

Several people have been living at the site the whole time it’s been open, over a year, and still have not been able to move into permanent housing.

“The original lease said it was going to be renewed in perpetuity until people got housing,” said Merin, who’s also a high-profile civil rights attorney. “So we’re looking at that. Why didn’t they get housing?”

The Sacramento Homeless Union, which represents the homeless residents at Camp Resolution, said Friday in a news release it would fight the closure. It said the lease contains language that bars the city from closing the camp until all residents get permanent housing.

“Right now, the city of Sacramento is dramatically intensifying its illegal, violent and unconstitutional sweeps of the homeless,” the Sacramento Homeless Union said. “Camp Resolution was supposed to be a safe refuge from the city’s brutality and we have no intention of letting the city now shut it down without a fight. Even with its problems, the Camp was recognized as a potential model of success where the city had otherwise completely failed to address homelessness except through violence against the homeless themselves. Camp Resolution was never perfect, but it was and is an inspiration to the homeless everywhere. It was and is a victory for the organized homeless that is well worth defending.”

The city earlier this year opened a large North Sacramento homeless shelter on Roseville Road, but like all the city’s roughly 1,300 shelter beds, it’s typically full on any given night. Over 2,600 people are on the waiting list for a shelter bed, and an additional 666 families, according to a recent city report.