Roughly 50 unhoused men, women, and their pets were forced back on the streets or into temporary housing after the city of Sacramento closed down Camp Resolution, a high-profile and self-governed homeless camp, in late August.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg argued that the experiment was unsuccessful because of the conditions people in the camp were living in.
“Allowing residents to remain at Camp Resolution is not a viable option,” Steinberg said in an Aug. 26 statement. “Since March, the city has attempted outreach more than 60 times and made numerous offers of shelter, including long-term stay motel rooms for the medically vulnerable.”
A lease between Safe Ground Sacramento, the nonprofit that operated the camp, and the city stated that the agreement would be renewed until all residents had permanent housing. Residents referenced a line in the lease which noted it would “extend for 120 days from the Execution Date” and that it would be “automatically renewed for an additional 120 days or until all residents have been placed in individual, permanent, durable housing.”
That didn’t happen, and most of the services and shelters offered to Camp Resolution residents when it was closed were temporary.
CapRadio’s Government Reporter Kristin Lam and Communities Reporter Gerardo Zavala visited the site last Wednesday to speak with former residents still living in the area. They saw Sacramento park rangers, police officers and Department of Community Response staff clearing out several encampments near the camp.
Former Camp Resolution residents speak on the aftermath of the closure
Adan Ceja stands near an encampment he set up with former Camp Resolution residents after its closure Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Sacramento.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
Adan Ceja lived in a tent outside Camp Resolution for roughly two years. He and several other former Camp Resolution residents were asked to pack up their belongings and clear the area last Wednesday by park troopers and the Sacramento Police Department.
“They keep moving us everywhere,” he said. “Where do they want us to go from here? We can’t go nowhere because eventually from here, they’re going to move us.”
One of the reasons Ceja said he hadn’t accepted housing services is because of his 10-year-old dog, Pika, since a lot of shelters don’t accept dogs. While looking at the empty plot of land that was once Camp Resolution, he argued that the city should at least let them put tents up there.
The Central Valley Regional Regional Water Quality Control Board found the soil at Camp Resolution is contaminated and presents health risks. When Camp Resolution was up and running, city officials did not allow tent camping on the premises for that reason.
Ceja is currently in the process of getting a tiny home or trailer at a temporary shelter that opened earlier this year at 3900 Roseville Rd. in North Sacramento.
“I’m tired of being out here,” he said. “I want to get my housing.”
Amber Harper, 40, was born and raised in Sacramento. She lived at Camp Resolution for six months and said she’s had to relocate her camp seven times since its closure.
“They don’t give you much time to move so you go to the next closest reliable thing,” Harper said while standing under a tree she had set up camp at with a few other unhoused people. “I find a structure, a tree or some shade because it’s really hot.”
Amber Harper stands next to her dog Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Sacramento. Harper said Camp Resolution provided her with enough stability to have a job and work towards her education goals.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
Harper said she feels isolated and like she was left to figure things out on her own. When asked about what services were offered to her during the closure, she said no one offered her any.
“They said something about shelters,” she recalled. “I’ve stayed at a shelter before and it was really unsafe. It was safer for me outside than it was inside of a shelter. That’s why I choose to go about it the way I do not, from my prior experience with the shelter.”
While recounting this, Harper and her friends were packing up their belongings again to clear the area. She said her plan was just to find another structure nearby but didn’t elaborate on where.
“They were just here yesterday and we already spoke with the private patrol of the property,” she noted. “They said we were fine, it just had to be 30 feet from the ledge from the creek. We thought we were fine, but we weren’t. We’re just trying to make a last-ditch effort to salvage what we can and keep on trying to find shelter.”
Park rangers also instructed people camping less than 40 feet from a bike trail near Camp Resolution that they would need to relocate. When asked why, a park ranger explained that it’s because the bike path and everything within 40 feet of it is considered a park and therefore city property.
Jennifer Singer, associate media and communications manager for Sacramento, confirmed that the city owns the paved road and the land around the bike trail.
Harper said she’s lost connection with most of her friends because some of them had vehicles while others didn’t, and others chose to leave the area completely. Harper’s vehicle was stolen roughly four months ago while she was living in Camp Resolution, so she chose to stick around the area while she figures out her next move.
However, she’s lost the stability that allowed her to hold down a job and work towards her education goals.
“I had cleaning service I was picking back up and going to get back into school for my registered nursing program, and that kind of just made everything come to a halt,” she said referring to the closure of the encampment. “You spend more time moving, and trying to get situated — [that] takes up some time. It’s another piece of property that’s just sitting there and they’re doing nothing with it. It doesn’t make any sense to me really.”
Thirty-seven-year-old Raymond, who didn’t share his last name and goes by “D-Ray,” said he was living in Camp Resolution since it was created. The expectations the city put on the encampment like having running water and electricity was “impossible,” he said, but he added that they had ways of accessing both.
“We may not have studied electricity, but we also had generators and solar panels and things like that,” he stressed. “They felt it was inhabitable for us to live in our own area, and yet they made us move our camps … promised us housing and then took everything away from us in the end.”
Raymond said he was offered to temporarily live at some local homeless shelters including the Roseville Road site but denied them because of unreasonable expectations such as a 10:30 p.m. curfew and needing to go through a pocket search every day.
“I believe in simple freedoms,” he emphasized. “You’re not gonna tell me when and where I can and cannot go. You’re not gonna put us in this little [expletive] shack with these little [expletive] accommodations and pack us in like sardines and think it’s gonna be cool.”
Raymond said he’d been sleeping in a hammock near the encampment since it closed. Recently, he said he awoke to a park ranger writing him a $500 ticket for tying a rope to a country tree and building a structure.
“I am broke and breaking down daily,” he continued. “Mentally, I am worn down, but everybody looks to the stronger people. When Camp Resolution ended, I moved 13 people out by myself. Now they all looking at me to move their campsites because they’re unable to do it.”
Tena Pfluger is from Modesto. She was visiting UC Davis for orbital eye cancer treatment and eventually chose to camp in Sacramento to avoid having to travel so often. In an attempt to return home, she saved up $2,000 and purchased a truck two weeks ago.
“On Tuesday, they towed the truck, and I had a note in the window saying, ‘My truck is not running correctly. I just purchased it and could you please give me a couple of days to get it registered,’” she recounted while packing up her belongings to leave the area as instructed by park rangers. “And now I’m back to square one. They got my truck, my wallet and my way to get myself back on my feet again.”
Pfluger didn’t live in Camp Resolution, but she did try to get in after she got an infection in her eye from being outside. However, it was full so she chose to camp near the encampment on private property instead.
“Our country was founded on homeless people,” she said. “My dad came from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and he ended up on these rivers working in the fields. I don’t know why they’re being so discriminative against the homeless people.”
Sacramento police officers, park rangers and Department of Community Response staff swept several encampments near the former site of Camp Resolution Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Sacramento.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
What now?
Arturo Baiocchi, an associate professor of social work at Sacramento State, said he doesn’t see the camp as a failed experiment because of the empowerment and sense of community it created.
“I do think other communities should look at this with some optimism that this kind of arrangement can work,” Baiocchi said. “But obviously something here didn’t happen right at the end.”
The professor, who’s studied Camp Resolution for the past year, plans to follow the fallout of the closure and where its former residents end up.
Sacramento Homeless Union President Crystal Sanchez said last week that only three people from the encampment were provided shelter at Roseville Road on the day of the closure. She said most of the other 48 residents are back on the streets and are still unable to access services.
“There’s been a lot of things that have happened to these people on the streets since they’ve been out,” Sanchez stressed. “We’ve had people who’ve been assaulted, who have just been harmed and in constant sweeps.”
The former site of Camp Resolution on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Sacramento.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio
She noted that providing respite and water to these individuals has become increasingly difficult since they are all scattered around the region.
“With Camp Resolution, we could pull right up and drop off water,” she said. “Now we got people out in the woods in the middle of nowhere hiding because the police are looking for them. These are human beings, people that want services. They’re just not able to get services because the services are so backed up.”
She noted that the homeless union has been able to continue providing some services, including hotels for three of Camp Resolution’s highest-risk residents, through community donations.
CapRadio's Sacramento Government reporter Kristin Lam contributed reporting for this story.
Follow us for more stories like this
CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.
Donate Today
