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Mayor Kevin McCarty discusses the framework of a proposed city-county joint powers authority to address homelessness during the Sacramento City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 28, 2026.<\/p>\n
JOS\u00c9 LUIS VILLEGAS<\/p>\n
jvillegas@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
The years-long quest to better manage homelessness among governments in Sacramento County appears to have achieved a breakthrough.<\/p>\n
The Sacramento City Council has unanimously agreed on the powers that a new countywide joint powers authority on homelessness would wield. And a key member of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is supportive of the concept.<\/p>\n
The key, it turns out, is to create a JPA with little actual authority to do anything. Instead, the concept is largely a venue where county and city leaders can routinely meet in public and make progress through communication and collaboration.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s essentially a convening session, sharing information,\u201d said Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI support the model as a formal, public forum that brings us all together to improve coordination,\u201d said Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond. Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez had previously told The Bee\u2019s Ishani Desai<\/a> that she supports this approach as well.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of logic in this as a next step in forging stronger ties among local governments to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis. Governments don\u2019t like to give up any of their powers and any of their funding sources. But our leaders meeting routinely in public, and sharing successes and failures, needs to happen before changing the complex organizational structure surrounding the response to homelessness.<\/p>\n It was unclear at the April 28 council meeting that the potential regional compromise on managing homelessness was taking hold. The council had tasked its staff in January to return with different scopes and powers that could constitute a countywide homeless JPA. The staff did so.<\/a> And the council approved one.<\/p>\n Behind the scenes over the past few weeks, however, some shuttle diplomacy apparently had been taking place. McCarty had been vetting the winning approach with other elected officials. A consensus was emerging behind the scenes.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this was a fair compromise,\u201d McCarty said.<\/p>\n This new homeless authority would be led by nine local elected officials. Two would be county supervisors, three from the Sacramento City Council and four from the other cities in the county (Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Folsom). \u201cThis body would meet on a monthly basis in public meetings,\u201d McCarty said.<\/p>\n The one pot of money this JPA would oversee is one that none of these governments currently control. Instead, tens of millions of state and federal housing dollars are managed annually by a board tied to the nonprofit Sacramento Steps Forward<\/a>. This organization, among other things, manages the countywide database of people experiencing homelessness and conducts the biannual survey that estimates the county\u2019s homeless population.<\/p>\n Federal law has long required local nonprofits that receive federal funds to have this spending overseen by a stakeholder board<\/a> known as the Continuum of Care<\/a>. The city\u2019s proposal would merge this function into this new JPA. This couldn\u2019t happen without the approval of the existing Continuum of Care board, on which various elected officials sit in the minority.<\/p>\n Rare is the day when an existing board of any kind gives up its powers to go along with someone else\u2019s idea. And this one \u201chas not yet taken a formal vote on any current governance model,\u201d Sacramento Steps Forward Executive Director Lisa Bates<\/a> told the city council last week. \u201cIt seeks to thoughtfully consider all the proposals in coordination with key partners.\u201d<\/p>\n McCarty says he\u2019s optimistic. \u201cWe\u2019re going to pursue this change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n If local officials manage to agree on how to create a joint homeless authority, the milestone would undoubtedly complicate, if not end, the prospects of the state imposing one via legislation. This scenario has been the prospect since last summer, when State Sen. Angelique Ashby of Sacramento wrote a bill that would compel local officials to work together.<\/p>\n Ashby\u2019s model, embodied in SB Bill 802, would shift considerable powers over public housing and the homeless response away from the city and county of Sacramento, transferring it to the existing Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. This power shift, and how SB 802 mandates a particular solution, has divided the local political community while also keeping the issue on the front burner.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy for any conversations where people are talking about a JPA and how the region can come together,\u201d Ashby said Monday. She counts at least three county supervisors interested the proposed city approach. \u201cThat would be great,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Given the pace of progress on anything in Sacramento, it could take months for all the jurisdictions to agree to do anything jointly about homelessness. It\u2019s not too much to ask that our top local leaders periodically sit around the same table to discuss the most wicked problem they all share. It\u2019s the very least they could do.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n
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