Sacramento reopens sanctioned homeless campsite at Miller Park

Miller Park in Sacramento will again serve as a sanctioned camping site for people experiencing homelessness, seven months after powerful wind and rain storms forced city officials to close it last winter. 

The city plans to add back all 60 tents at the “Safe Ground” camping site, which includes portable restrooms, wash stations and a security fence, south of Broadway near the Sacramento River. 

“While these sites are not an optimal long-term solution to the crisis, they are a necessary triage step during the interim while we focus on increasing our affordable housing stock,” Sacramento City Councilmember Katie Valenzuela said in a news release announcing the reopening. 

Valenzuela called on city officials to reopen the site in February following the worst of the winter storms, noting Miller Park had served as a stop-gap homeless shelter for people in need of immediate relief. Sacramento’s 1,100 city-funded shelter beds are typically full on any given night. 

But instead of adding the tents back right away, Tim Swanson, a spokesperson for City Manager Howard Chan said at the time the city was “exploring options to better leverage its limited resources and provide more cost effective and sustainable solutions.” 

As a compromise, officials announced later in February they would deploy what are now 17 trailers to Miller Park to serve as shelter. 

City spokesperson Katharine Weir-Ebster said this week there are now 30 people using the trailers, while 15 people have already moved into the reopened tents, with several more expected to arrive in the coming days. 

Miller Park’s sanctioned campsite first opened in February 2022. It served an average of about 80 people when all its tents were occupied, according to the city. The tents can shelter up to two people, while the trailers can shelter a maximum of three.

The city contracts with First Step Communities to provide services at the campsite, including meals, showers and restrooms. “Our capable staff are on-site 24-hours a day, and each client works with our dedicated Case Management team who provide navigation and support to end this cycle of homelessness,” according to the contractor’s website.  

In recent months, both Valenzuela and Mayor Darrell Steinberg have urged city officials to create more temporary shelter sites. Steinberg says the sites connect unhoused residents with critical services and allow the city to begin enforcing recently passed enforcement laws.

Sacramento voters approved a ban on homeless encampments last fall. Here’s why the city has been slow to enforce it.

Those include voter-approved Measure O, which bans camping on public property under certain conditions. The city has been slow to enforce that law because it lacks available shelter space, which must be offered to people living in encampments before officials can force them to move or fine them. 

Steinberg says Miller Park won’t be the only site to add more shelter capacity. 

“We will aggressively pursue more safe ground in the weeks ahead,” the mayor said in the news release. “By clearly identifying where people can camp, we can more effectively clean those city corridors where it is both unsafe and unhealthy for people to live.”

People in need of shelter can be considered for the Miller Park site by calling 311. 

Contact CapRadio reporter Chris Nichols at [email protected].