Less than two months after it opened, Capitol Park Hotel houses scores of people who previously lived on the streets of Sacramento’s Central City, and it has not caused an increase in crime in the surrounding blocks.

As of Oct. 25, 113 people were staying in the shelter, which offers wraparound services designed to help people stabilize their lives and transition into permanent housing.

The shelter is being run by Volunteers of America on behalf of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. Mayor Darrell Steinberg has secured City Council approval to open two similarly large shelters in the next year — one for adults along the W/X Freeway near Alhambra and Broadway and another for women in Meadowview. The city has also embraced a variety of other strategies to address the crisis of homelessness, including scattered shelter beds and a program that places young adults with families.

After approximately 16 months, the century-old Capitol Hotel building will be renovated by Mercy Housing into permanent supportive housing for the homeless.

Three people have been placed in permanent housing out of the shelter so far, and two have found jobs. More are in the pipeline for housing as the placement effort ramps up.

Anthony Davis, 70, was set to sign the lease for his new studio apartment in West Sacramento on Wednesday, Oct. 30. Davis was homeless for two years.

“I was on the streets, on the riverbank, but I didn’t give up,” he said.

Arthur Bailey, 53, is a guest at Capitol Park after 15 years of living outdoors. “I’m taking this seriously,” he said. “I’m going to be off the streets in 20 days. I’ve got a place lined up. I’m excited.”

Figures from the Sacramento Police Department show a decrease in serious crimes in the four blocks around the shelter in September 2019 when compared to September 2018 when the facility was still a single-room-occupancy hotel.

Serious crimes reported in the four-block area around Capitol Park Hotel fell from 18 in September 2018 to three in the same month of 2019, after the hotel was converted to a Rehousing Shelter.

Captain Norm Leong, who oversees the Central Command downtown, said the department has added mid-day patrols around the shelter at Ninth and L streets. He said representatives of the police department meet with representatives of the shelter and SHRA every day.

“With added police patrols in the area and working in partnership with the shelter and SHRA, we haven’t seen any negative impact on the neighborhood surrounding the shelter,” Leong said.

As promised, he said, the shelter has focused on housing those who were already homeless downtown and nearby. Bike officers who are familiar with homeless people in the vicinity make recommendations to Sacramento Steps Forward, the regional homeless services agency that manages entry to the shelter.

Inside the shelter, staff members get help from current residents who volunteer their time and former residents of the Railroad Drive shelter that the city operated from December 2017 to the spring of 2019.

Anna Darzins, program manager for VOA, said many of those served by Capitol Park Hotel are people in their 20s who aged out of the foster care system and became homeless. “That is a common theme,” she said.

In the video below, Capitol Park resident Michael Oyster discusses his volunteer work in the shelter with Program Manager Anna Darzins (right), and Amani Sawires Rapaski, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Volunteers of America.