City of Sacramento signs lease allowing tight-knit North Sacramento camp to stay put

After months of uncertainty, the city of Sacramento has agreed to allow a tight-knit North Sacramento homeless encampment to stay put, and also move them out of tents and into trailers.

The city has leased the property, at Colfax Street and Arden Way, for free to a new organization called Safe Ground Inc., run by prominent civil rights attorney Mark Merin, according to a city blog post.

The city will bring up to 33 trailers to the camp, called Camp Resolution, over the coming weeks, city spokesman Tim Swanson said.

The trailers have been sitting unused at a Natomas city lot since June 2021.

The lease will expire in about four months, with an option to renew for another four months. City and county staff will visit the site to provide services as well as help getting the residents into more permanent housing, the blog post stated. The camp will include a “resident council,” operations plan, and good neighbor policy, which will be approved by the city.

A group of people, mostly women, started camping on the lot over a year ago. They felt it was safer than the riverfront, which often floods and where trees sometimes fall on tents and sexual assaults are frequent.

Last year, city officials submitted a plan to designate the site as a staffed safe parking lot where homeless individuals could stay in vehicles and receive government services. The water board in January granted a variance for the proposal, a step intended to move the plan forward.

Officials told the people moving there that if they left temporarily, they would be allowed back, Joyce Williams, who lives at the camp, said at the time.

After spending $617,000 to pave and fence the site, the city abandoned the plan in April, finding it would not help enough people to justify the cost.

In October, a group of people, still unable to find housing, went back to the lot and resumed camping there, also using it to send a message. They hung colorful signs around the fence. One sign questioned abandoning the project after such a large investment, it read “$617,000 TAXPAYER DOLLARS FOR A PARKING LOT???”

Another sign stated “COME MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS.” The residents started holding family dinners, hosting poetry and open mic nights that are open to the public and taking security shifts.

Sacramento police posted notices at the camp in November ordering them to leave or they would be cleared. When 60 people showed up at a City Council meeting in protest on the eve of the planned sweep, Councilman Sean Loloee, who represents the area, announced the city had “delayed” the sweep.

For four months since, the people have been living on the lot, but unsure if will be able to stay.

The Sacramento Homeless Union, which represents the residents at the camp, also brokered the new lease, as well Loloee and City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood, the city blog post said.

Merin has since 2020 operated a small Safe Ground with uniform tents at 12th and C streets, which the city also allowed after threatening to close, but that one is on land owned by Merin. The city also runs a safe ground with trailers at Miller Park, but that one was not started as an existing unsanctioned encampment.