The sidewalk under this Capital City Freeway overpass in Midtown Sacramento often serves as a sad and squalid home for a dozen or more tent-dwellers. During the weeks that these two gentlemen lived there, they kept it relatively tidy.
It has been five years since I moved from the Santa Cruz Mountains to Midtown Sacramento—this is my first time living in a city. As you may have heard, this place is in the midst of a kind of Renaissance, and it is a great place to live. Except for one thing: I don’t go a day without having to experience at least a twinge of trauma caused by the fact that there are hundreds of people in this neighborhood who are forced to live on the street.
I live four blocks from McKinley Park, a cultural resource that features a big rose garden, an awesome public swimming pool, outdoor yoga twice a week, and my granddaughter’s favorite playground. Walking there involves traversing one or another freeway overpass, under which I have witnessed way too much human suffering. I can’t seem to get used to this—it always provokes a mix of emotions ranging from heartbreak to anger; I don’t get mad at these folks I consider victims, but at the social and political forces that keep them where they are.
Here is a statement that should not be controversial: The primary cause of homelessness in California is a lack of housing supply and the accompanying increase in housing costs. It took California a few decades to fully recognize this, but thank goodness, the California legislature and the Newsom administration seem to have finally figured it out. Just a month ago, the state committed $200 million to move 7,300 people out of encampments and into housing.
