Sacramento property owner sues city for not clearing homeless camps, RVs from this street

A property owner in a North Sacramento industrial area has filed a lawsuit against the city over homeless people living in RVs and camps lining the street.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Sacramento County Superior Court by 1900 Railroad LLC, asks a judge to order the city to provide relief in a manner to be determined by law.

The business is located near the American River Parkway, on Railroad Drive — the same street where the city operated a large homeless shelter before closing it in April 2019.

The city was hit with another lawsuit regarding homelessness last week. A group called Coalition for Compassion and business owner Michael Malinowski filed a lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court seeking to halt the city’s shelter siting plan, including 200 tiny homes planned under the W-X freeway, for environmental reasons.

The North Sacramento property owner, based in San Diego County, has had to hire a private security firm; clean excrement, needles and drug paraphernalia from the street; and the building suffered fire damage and vandalism caused by homeless people, the lawsuit alleged. The owner has asked the city to relocate the homeless, tow the abandoned vehicles and clean up debris, none of which happened, the lawsuit alleged.

Due to the Martin v. Boise federal court ruling, governments cannot cite people for camping on public property unless a shelter bed is available and transportation is offered. All shelters in Sacramento are typically full. In addition, during the coronavirus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has issued guidance saying if individual housing is not available, homeless people should be able to stay where they are to avoid breaking connections with service providers and spreading the coronavirus.

The lawsuit alleges the city has “hidden” behind the Martin v. Boise case as a reason not to clear camps.

“If Martin truly immunized municipalities from doing what Railroad 1900, LLC has been demanding that the City of Sacramento do, then why have multiple other municipalities, including the City and County of San Francisco, immediately resolved such lawsuits by agreeing to comply with the law?” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleges there are areas called “containment zones” where city officials allow the homeless to gather.

“The property is located within one of the containment zones that the City of Sacramento has allowed to develop to help isolate and/or concentrate the plight of the homelessness in those areas, as opposed to the more affluent neighborhoods like East Sacramento, Land Park, Westlake, and Sierra Oaks,” the lawsuit said.

City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood said there are no “containment zones” and no effort to keep unsheltered residents in any particular area of the city.

“Until very recently, the City was prohibited from removing or relocating unsheltered residents pursuant to a County Public Health order that directed the City ‘to allow people who are living unsheltered, in cars, RVs, and trailers … on public property to remain where they are …’” Alcala Wood said in a statement. “That order expired June 15, 2021. As part of its multi-dimensional approach to addressing homelessness, the City recently adopted the Comprehensive Siting Plan and continues to evaluate and implement new measures to contend with the health-and-safety impacts of long-standing encampments, including the impacts to the surrounding businesses and communities. The City is using all its available resources to respond and will continue to address the hardships encountered by unsheltered individuals while working to ensure public safety is not impacted by unsafe encampments.”

The expiration of the county public health order on June 15 has not caused the city to respond to homelessness any differently, city spokesman Tim Swanson said.