City to open new shelter-and-service campus for people experiencing homelessness
Sacramento, CA (Jan. 5, 2024) – Five months after the City Council authorized him to identify and stand up new safe camping sites, City Manager Howard Chan has announced that the City will open a new shelter-and-service campus at 3900 Roseville Road in north Sacramento.
The new campus will begin accepting clients next week and will have the capacity to house up to 240 people experiencing homelessness in sleeping cabins and trailers.
Construction is wrapping up on the site, which will feature 60 sleeping cabins built by Pallet LLC and 40 trailers, most of which were provided by the state during the pandemic and were previously deployed at Cal Expo. The site also contains permanent, plumbed restrooms and showers for clients to use.
The City is working with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to expand electrical capacity on the site so that each trailer and tiny home can have its own heating and cooling unit. Until that work is complete, clients can access a central cooling and warming center building during inclement weather.
Other buildings on the campus will provide office space for service providers, including behavioral health specialists coordinated through the City’s partnership with the County of Sacramento.
The 7.5-acre site is a former City corporation yard that had been leased to the Air National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. It recently became available after the lease expired. The campus is located away from residential neighborhoods but close to a Sacramento Regional Transit light rail station.
“When we were evaluating City-owned parcels as potential shelter sites, this property checked all the boxes,” Chan said. “It’s safe, secure and has existing infrastructure that can be utilized immediately as well as the potential for growth with additional funding and partners. I would like to thank City staff for their incredible work getting this property up and running so quickly. It was no small feat, and their tireless work made all the difference.”
Mayor Darrell Steinberg drafted the August resolution that gave the City Manager the authority to identify and stand up new safe camping sites without coming back to Council for approval. The action was intended to help the City quickly expand its inventory of 1,200 emergency shelter beds and safe camping spaces as part of its ongoing response to the homelessness crisis.
"I'm grateful that our City Manager and his team have delivered much more than a safe camping ground,” Steinberg said. “This new campus uses existing City resources to combine humane, dignified shelter with the services people need to exit homelessness. This site has the potential over time to help thousands of the people suffering on our streets and reduce the impact of encampments in our neighborhoods.”
Staff in recent months examined more than 900 vacant City-owned parcels that are a half-acre or larger as potential Safe Ground sites. Parcels were evaluated on how quickly they could be brought online, with site control, environmental impacts, existing infrastructure, access, proximity to public transportation and other factors taken into consideration.
The City has identified other sites that can be used should the Roseville Road campus reach and maintain capacity and additional funding for operations can be secured.
The City has spent several weeks repairing and renovating the Roseville Road campus. It worked with Pallet to assemble the sleeping cabins, most of which the City had previously purchased in response to a Council directive. City staff also transported and arranged the trailers.
The sleeping cabins erected at the new Roseville Road campus are not the same sleeping cabins as the 350 that have been designated for Sacramento by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Those are slated to go on a new community care campus being constructed by Wellspace Health on Stockton Boulevard and potentially on a Safe Stay community planned by Sacramento County on Watt Avenue. Construction is expected to begin on Stockton Boulevard in the coming weeks.
The new Roseville Road campus will have an experienced operator and 24/7 security. First Step Communities, which currently runs the City’s Miller Park Safe Ground, will operate the campus. First Step also operates The Grove, the City’s sleeping cabin community in north Sacramento for transition-aged youth, and it has been designated by the County to run the new Stockton Boulevard campus as well.
People currently staying in tents or trailers at the Miller Park Safe Ground will be transitioned into trailers or Pallet homes at the new Roseville Road campus. The Miller Park Safe Ground, which currently hosts 60 tents and 17 trailers, will be phased out in the coming weeks.
This past winter, the City was forced to evacuate the Miller Park Safe Ground due to strong storms and rising river levels. The Roseville Road campus provides a more stable environment, with people able to stay in individual structures rather than tents, officials said.
Staff will work closely with the operator to ensure a robust good-neighbor policy is implemented and enforced in the area surrounding the Roseville Road campus.
Existing building on new Roseville Road campus
The City in recent years has taken significant steps to respond to the ongoing homelessness crisis. This includes the launch of new shelters and Safe Ground sites, the establishment of the Department of Community Response, the signing of the historic partnership with the County and the ongoing interdepartmental efforts from the City’s Incident Management Team.
The City’s new data dashboard quantifies the scope of the work City teams are doing on the streets. Since the week of Sept. 25, the dashboard shows that outreach teams referred more than 1,900 people to services. City crews and contractors cleaned up more than 3.5 million pounds of trash during that period. They were able to get people to voluntarily move their belongings more than 1,700 times to comply with City ordinances requiring that sidewalks be kept clear and buffer zones be maintained around critical infrastructure and buildings.
