Sacramento Homeless Encampment Reaches Historic Lease Agreement With City

On March 31, a Sacramento homeless encampment called “Camp Resolution” secured a lease with the city, ensuring the self-governed community could stay on city-owned land until residents are connected with permanent housing. 

The 2.3 acre parcel of land will be leased for free to residents as a “safe parking shelter” where people can live in RVs and trailers. The city will provide 20 trailers for residents who are currently living in tents, and the land will be fenced off. (The city says the land is too toxic for public camping, so tents will be removed.) The first city-owned trailer arrived Monday, according to the Sacramento Bee. The agreement also includes cleaning of adjacent sidewalks and regular garbage collection by the city.

Legal agreements between homeless encampments and governments are rare, and a promise of permanent housing is particularly unique. The lease signed with the city promises automatic renewal every 120 days “until all residents have been placed in individual, permanent durable housing,” a description that would preclude placement in dormitory style shelters or temporary solutions like Pallet shelters, options often criticized by unhoused people.

“It's pretty unprecedented, as far as I've been able to tell,” said Anthony Prince, an attorney representing Camp Resolution residents who helped secure the lease.

“Our understanding…is that this means housing, it means apartments, it means structures, brick and mortar places to live that are fit for human habitation and we're not going to be accepting anything less,” Prince said. He says the lease intentionally does not specify a funding source and allows for state or federal support.

“This camp cannot be taken down until everyone is housed. Whether the city provides it or the county or the state or the federal government, whichever way the housing is going to be provided,” he said.

There’s no definitive timetable for housing residents, and a spokesperson from the City of Sacramento told Motherboard, “The City will be working with the County of Sacramento and other service providers to help residents transition into permanent housing as quickly as possible,” 

As part of the agreement, the encampment’s “resident council” must submit an operations plan within 30 days. According to the lease, this includes a list of residents as well as rules for visitors ensuring that guests “will not become a nuisance for neighbors.”

Because the camp is not a legal entity, the lessee on the document is technically Safe Ground Sacramento Inc., a homelessness services nonprofit, with residents named as benefactors of the agreement.

The camp is also unique because its population is 85 percent women, and women were among its founding members.

“We’re mostly women, so of course we want a safe space where we can be at. We don’t want to be out in the streets where we’re dying,” one resident of the encampment said in a video from an April 1 press conference posted to Twitter.

Another resident identified as “Chop” described years of losing belongings during encampment sweeps in a video from the same press conference. “How am I supposed to get ahead, how am I supposed to do anything for myself if I have to keep losing everything?,” Chop said.

Camp Resolution is a fenced-in, paved lot on Colfax Street, filled with RVs and other vehicles. Google Maps view of the site shows banners strewn on the fencing that read, “We Are Resilient,” and “Camp Resolution is At Full Capacity,” along with a phone number for people with questions. One banner has the words “Martin V Boise,” written in blue, stenciled letters, followed by a brief description of the court’s holding in that case: “Persons can not be punished for sleeping out on public property in the absence of adequate alternatives.” 

The space is the site of failed city promises; it was cited by the city in 2021, first as a space for tiny homes and then as a safe parking space for RVs. But the state’s Water Board had put restrictions on the land because that the soil held higher than normal amounts of harmful chemicals, including benzene, which is carcinogenic.

The city says it applied to the state’s Water Board for an exemption to use the space as a safe parking site in October 2021 and on January 13, 2022 was granted permission “under very limited conditions,”, including an agreement that the site would be “fenced in, secured, and staffed 24 hours a day.”

A February 8, 2022 letter from the Water Board to the City of Sacramento states that the land did not not meet those limited conditions, saying, “The property has not been fully fenced, there are campers and vehicles parked on the unpaved portion of the property, and there are tents.”

Later, the city abandoned the idea of a safe parking site, not because of these violations but because it had become cost-prohibitive, according to a statement.

On or around October 5, 2022, the space was occupied by a group of mostly women who had faced repeated sweeps across the city. The group was formed in part to support Holly Porter, a quadriplegic member of the encampment who was bed-bound. (Porter was the subject of a January op-ed published by the Sacramento Bee.)

In a video from an April 1 press conference, a resident named Joyce describes how Porter’s situation and ongoing sweeps led to the camp’s formation. “Holly being in the situation she’s in was taking a toll on most of the women. So when they swept, I said, ‘Well we have to figure something out before the first rain,’” Joyce says in the video. She said the previous winter, city officials had provided no help to Porter when it rained. “Why do we call it Camp Resolution? Because we’re resolving what the city can’t,” she said.

Shortly after forming the encampment, residents joined up with the Sacramento Homeless Union, an advocacy group composed of homeless and formerly homeless people and part of the National Homeless Union.

In November, the city planned to clear Camp Resolution citing the Water Board’s finding that the soil was contaminated. In a November statement, the city said the space “was never intended to support tent camping.” 

Several dozen Camp Resolution residents spoke out against plans to clear the camp at a November 15 Sacramento City Council meeting. 

One resident who spoke at the November meeting said she lived at Camp Resolution with her 65-year-old grandmother and her aunt. She said her mother also lived there but has since moved out of state. The resident said she was caring for her grandmother who was unable to secure a place to live and that local agencies had been of no help. “An ID and a bus pass? That’s not going to help my grandma,” the resident said.

Housed neighbors living in the district where the camp sits also spoke in support of an agreement, lifting their children to the microphone to advocate for residents.

The city eventually came to the table, drawing up a lease agreement in conversation with residents and Prince from the National Homeless Union. A previous version of the lease did not contain promises of permanent housing and was rejected by encampment residents, Prince said.

The encampment is not currently letting in new residents for fear of overcrowding and because of the challenges of  self-governing, Prince said. But it will come up with guidelines for future residents in the event that space opens up.

There are a few other examples of unhoused residents getting their encampments temporarily sanctioned by city officials. The most notable and longest lasting example is the case of Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon, the result of a protest encampment twenty years ago that was eventually granted a permanent residence and remains self-governed. But that agreement did not come with a written promise to provide permanent housing. 

The success of Camp Resolution in getting the city to the table could bode well for other groups of unhoused residents seeking self-determination and concrete promises of housing, something frequently promised to encampment residents, who are often churned through the shelter system and temporary housing. Prince said he’s been fielding phone calls from homeless advocates across the country since the lease was signed.

Last month, Motherboard reported on a group of encampment residents in Los Angeles that issued a set of demands for the city, including concrete promises of permanent housing. All the residents had experienced previous sweeps and unfulfilled promises of housing.

Despite working with Camp Resolution, the City of Sacramento continues homeless sweeps across the city, including the so-called Island encampment this week.  

Prince said Camp Resolution is using their line of communication with the city to advocate for an end to the sweeps.

“We're putting pressure on the city to stop the sweeps and instead use the resources that normally go to the police and other agencies to conduct sweeps... to support the camps,” he said.