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State Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento, speaks at a news conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, about SB 802, to create a countywide homeless agency.<\/p>\n
HECTOR AMEZCUA<\/p>\n
hamezcua@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
For years, Sacramento County\u2019s Board of Supervisors has refused calls to work with other local governments<\/a> in a united authority to manage homelessness. On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will push them to do so. It\u2019s about time.<\/p>\n SB 802, authored by Sacramento Sen. Angelique Ashby, is as much a win for her as it is a rebuke of Sacramento supervisors Phil Serna and Patrick Kennedy for resisting routine meetings with local leaders confronting this humanitarian crisis on the front lines.<\/p>\n \u201cHomelessness does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries,\u201d Newsom wrote in his signing message. \u201cNo city or county can solve this crisis alone.\u201d<\/p>\n It is embarrassing that a sitting governor would have to sign a bill forcing elected leaders in Sacramento to do their jobs, but that\u2019s where we are. Senate Bill 802<\/a> and this directive from the Capitol places the next steps squarely in the hands of local elected officials.<\/p>\n \u201cSee it through,\u201d Ashby said of her bill. \u201cTalk to the public and share resources and ideas. Work together!\u201d<\/p>\n This county is one of the largest in the state where the population of the unhoused appears to be going up, not down, based on biennial \u201cpoint-in-time\u201d counts. And the primary response to homelessness in California falls to each and every county, given its responsibility to provide safety-net services such as drug and mental health treatment.<\/p>\n Yet Sacramento supervisors distanced themselves from the capital city, Sacramento, due to the increasingly reclusive behavior of outgoing District 1 Supervisor Serna<\/a>. He turned his back on the city\u2019s growing homeless challenge as his relationship openly soured with former Mayor Darrell Steinberg. And no other supervisor, particularly Kennedy, stepped in to fill the breach.<\/p>\n The county supervisors managed to meet with city leaders about homelessness in October 2025. Yet the agenda, orchestrated by the county, did not include a discussion of when to meet next. There has been no subsequent public meeting, and only one task force meeting involving a limited set of local officials in private.<\/p>\n Ashby decided to take matters into her own hands last summer. The original SB 802<\/a>, which caught supervisors and Mayor Kevin McCarty by surprise, mandated this joint powers authority and directed that it be managed by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency<\/a>. But SHRA is only a joint powers authority between the city of Sacramento and the county. And its management of affordable housing and other efforts has been rightfully under scrutiny by Kennedy and other supervisors, who deserve credit here for some appropriate oversight. What\u2019s more, the original legislation redirected some coveted pots of affordable housing funds from local cities to SHRA. That set many cities on edge.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unsettled law whether the state can force local governments to participate in a joint powers authority, and the county seized on this as a reason to oppose SB 802. But underneath it all, the county has been resisting this type of collaboration on homelessness altogether while suggesting nothing of equal substance or formality. Serna has had this board in a bunker for years, with no way out.<\/p>\n Then Ashby in recent months began to get her bill into ready-for-prime-time shape. She eliminated SHRA as the governing vessel. She allowed the cities to keep their affordable housing funds. And she softened the mandate, requiring only that the local governments \u201cparticipate in and work together to establish a joint powers authority.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom has been rightfully critical of Sacramento County on its homeless response. One of his signature achievements, for example, is legislation that allows counties to compel treatment of homeless people and others suffering from mental illness and addiction by expanding the state\u2019s official definition of \u201cgravely disabled.\u201d Sacramento County in 2023 signaled that it would delay implementing this legislation, catching the governor\u2019s attention<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to see a sense of urgency,\u201d Newsom said at the time. He was right then. And he is right now to sign Ashby\u2019s SB 802.<\/p>\n
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