City of Sacramento spends $105 million to address homelessness crisis, Audit Reveals!
Sacramento Invests $105 Million in Tackling Homelessness: A Breakdown of the Spending Strategy (PHOTO: Yahoo News)
New Audit Reveals Significant Expenditure on Staff Time and Shelter Contracts
The City of Sacramento had a big problem with people who don not have a home last year as shown by a new audit. They used a lot of money $105 million to try to fix it. About half of that $57 million was just for the time that city workers spent on it. This is a lot more than in 2015. They also spent about $48 million on contracts to run the 1,300 beds in the city shelters.
Most of the staff time money $32 million was spent by the Department of Community Response. After that the city managers office spent $7.8 million the police department spent $4.5 million the fire department spent $4 million and the city attorney office spent $2.3 million. The audit said that the police departments $4.5 million could make the city council think about changing the plan to move nonviolent 911 calls about homeless people away from the police. This was the idea in 2020 when they made the Department of Community Response but this department has only been sent to 311 calls so far.
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Calls for Faster Solutions as Sacramento Struggles to Address Homelessness Amid Budget Constraints
Katie Valenzuela who is on the city council said that they need a faster way to help people who do not have homes without using the police. The audit also said that the city needs more bed for people who do not have homes because the shelter are almost always full. There are about 5,000 people without homes in Sacramento but only 1,300 shelter beds. Over 4,000 people are waiting for a bed. The most expensive shelter are run by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. They get $3.2 million to run 24 beds for young people $4.6 million for 100 beds on X Street and $3.5 million for 100 beds in Meadowview.
But making more beds will be hard because the city does not have much money. They have a big problem called a budget deficit which means they do not have enough money to pay for everything. They need to fix this by the end of June. They also pay a private company Forensic lean $4.7 million a year to clean up trash and make sure place where homeless people lived are clean. The city councils Budget and Audit Committee will talk about the audit next Tuesday.
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