California is telling one of its biggest regions to stop handling homelessness piecemeal. Senate Bill 802, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 20, requires Sacramento County and the cities of Sacramento, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights and Folsom to create a joint powers authority, a shared public agency, to lead the region's homelessness response by Jan. 1, 2028.
Why lawmakers stepped in
The bill's author, Senate Majority Leader Angelique Ashby, a Sacramento Democrat and former city councilmember, argued that local agencies have eight boards and close to 90 board members working on homelessness without coordinating, CalMatters reported. The result, she said, is duplicated services and confusion for people looking for help. The city and county had talked for more than a decade about forming a joint agency without doing it, and county civil grand juries had recommended one. Newsom wrote in his signing message that homelessness does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries and no city or county can solve it alone.
About 7,500 people in Sacramento County are homeless, about 4,200 of them unsheltered, according to the region's annual count cited by Abridged.
What the new agency will do
The law places the region's Continuum of Care, the body that coordinates federal homelessness funding and programs and is now led by the nonprofit Sacramento Steps Forward, under the authority's oversight. The new agency is expected to set goals, carry out the regional action plan and take over tasks such as the yearly point-in-time count and the data system that tracks services. Under the final text, each city and the county keep oversight of their own funds and programs, including contracts for outreach, shelter and prevention. That change, made after two years of negotiations, was the main sticking point for local governments.
Supporters, skeptics and open questions
Sacramento County and several supervisors and the sheriff opposed the bill as of August, while five Sacramento City Council members backed it, according to a legislative analysis cited by Abridged. Mayor Kevin McCarty opposed an earlier version but supports the final one. Sacramento Steps Forward CEO Trenton Simmons said how existing efforts will fit together is still "the big question," and that keeping services for unhoused people running during the transition matters most.