Time to look in the mirror: Sacramento tent city attracting national media attention

Sacramento's homeless population is front page news on the New York Times website. Homelessness is not a new issue in Sacramento. Neither is the fact that the city regularly shuffles people who build temporary encampments between several locations along the Sacramento River near highway 160, Discovery Park, and the industral area near Loaves and Fishes and the Salvation Army. The homeless population is visible along Richards Boulevard and 7th Street.

Their tents, either along the river under the 16th street bridge or in the railyards, are regularly raided by police and their belongings confiscated. Ostensibly this is to keep settlements from becoming too permanent, which, in the eyes of city officials, could raise issues about tenure and code enforcement.

One idea that has been floated recently is creating a permanent shelter, basically a warehouse site with basic services like a roof and bathrooms, modeled on shelters in Portland, OR. According to the Times article and Good Morning America, this idea has gained traction with Mayor Johnson. Foreclosure rates in the Sacramento Valley are among the highest in the nation. Increases in homelessness have, apparently, become too embarassing to the city to ignore any longer. To be seen is how a "permanent shelter" would be implemented- whether homeless people with pets would be accomodated (a major barrier for many to seeking formalized shelter) how safety would be provided for, and whether people would even want to live there.

The idea that we would need a "government sanctioned tent-city" speaks to the fact that we treat homeless people as sub-citizens, criminalizing their very existance and ability to meet their own basic human needs. We exclude them from the streets with loitering laws, by removing park benches, and puting spikes on the ground under window ledges where someone might sleep. The very word "homeless" indicates that someone is deficient because they are "without a home" or "without a roof" as some romance languages put it.

As Berkeley Professor Nezzar AlSayyad is fond of saying, Americans have a "right to safe and sanitary shelter, not a right to shelter." This means that although we make sure that a "formal" housing structure meets strict codes, we don't make sure that everyone is housed. In other words, if a homeless person erects a tent or a shanty without proper plumbing and insullation, it will be torn down even if it means that the person is sleeping on the ground in the rain with nothing over their head.

There are bigger problems of inequality, a broken economic system, and government indifference that fuel homelessness and turn the problem and the stigma on the individual, rather than society. We will see if Sacramento decides to address both the immediate housing crisis and its underlying causes.

E. Mattiuzzi

operation inconspicuous: put down the phone.

Cell phones are the new cigarettes. Don't have a newspaper or a book but want to blend in standing on the corner? Text a friend. If Steve McQueen were in a film today, he wouldn't try to look casual on the streets of San Francisco or New York by lighting up. He would flip open a cell phone and pretend to check his email. On the street, a phone in hand turns a loiterer into someone who's just waiting for a text to drop out of the ether and remind them why they exist. "He's looking at his phone, so he's probably not standing on that corner preparing to execute a heist." It's like when someone double parks their car but puts their emergency lights on. "Don't worry, nothing to see here." One of the greatest pleasures in life is sitting on a bench or at a cafe table peoplewatching. Why should it be awkward to have no official occupation other than drinking a coffee by oneself and observing others? In a society that spends so much time in cars and behind gates, we are constantly allowing the right to stand on the street with no particular business to be eroded.

E. Mattiuzzi