Q&A: Sacramento Homeless Union fights to end encampment sweeps during extreme heat
Activists are invoking emergency legal measures to protect unhoused communities.
With the planet just having experienced its hottest month on record, Westerners are forced to adapt to new weather extremes. Prolonged exposure to excessive heat can be life-threatening, especially for those facing housing insecurity. Last year in Los Angeles, for example, unhoused people accounted for nearly half of all deaths from heat illness or heat exposure.
In July, the city of Sacramento, California, planned to move people from shaded public spaces to Miller Park, a paved lot without any shade. Arguing that this would knowingly endanger their health and lives, the Sacramento Homeless Union filed a legal complaint, much as it did last summer and at the height of the pandemic. The complaint was successful, and U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley issued an order on Aug. 3 to halt all encampment sweeps until mid-August.
Across the West, similar litigation is challenging cities’ ability to remove or fine unhoused people for camping when no other shelter is available. In Washington, Arizona and New Mexico, the ACLU is fighting for constitutional protection from encampment sweeps.
In Sacramento, the homeless union leading this fight is a local chapter of the National Homeless Union. Anthony Prince, the lawyer for the Sacramento Union chapter, describes the union as an organized movement aimed at ensuring housing for every person, regardless of income, as a biological necessity and a human right. About 90% of union members and staff are either unhoused, struggling with housing issues and/or formerly homeless. Their work consists of legal action and community engagement with local government to ensure that cities and counties offer their homeless residents basic rights. Prince’s experience with the union goes back to the late 1980s; he spent decades as a blue-collar worker and union activist before becoming a labor lawyer.
High Country News spoke to Prince about the union’s changing priorities in an era of extreme temperatures, the disproportionate impacts of heat on unsheltered communities, and the controversial practice of encampment sweeps.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
High Country News: Can you explain what an encampment sweep is and what impact sweeps have on people who are facing housing insecurity?
Anthony Prince: Even the word sweep is problematic because it dehumanizes people. We use the term because it’s in the lexicon now. But it does indicate how people who are unhoused are treated — as if they’re refuse and trash and, therefore, they’re going to be swept.
“Even the word sweep is problematic because it dehumanizes people.”
I would describe (encampment sweeps) as efforts by the authorities, cities, transportation like Caltrans — and, in some cases, the state of California — directly to remove unhoused people from public spaces. For the most part, they’re just pushing them from one part of town to another. And most often, they are accompanied by deprivation and permanent loss of personal possessions and survival items.
HCN: What does excessive heat mean for people who are being displaced or are homeless now?
AP: Ninety-degree-plus weather is forecast for 21 days out of the 30 days of August. The heat will be felt even more intensely by the homeless because they’re on cement or asphalt. We have recorded asphalt temperatures ranging from 120 to 142 degrees (Fahrenheit). So these excessive temperatures cause heat stress, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, hyperthermia and death — not just acute injury, but long-term cumulative damage to vital organs.
HCN: You have also filed complaints to halt sweeps in the past, which were successful. Can you quantify the difference that was made from those? Do you expect the same impact this year?
AP: Well, I can tell you we saved lives. During COVID, we obtained court orders in Santa Cruz, Novato, Sausalito and Sacramento to stop city officials from destroying encampments. That practice was condemned by the CDC because the sweeps contributed to the spread of the deadly virus and the separation of homeless persons from vital services. The successful litigation tied to a public health emergency set the precedent for us to file complaints during the extreme heat that threatened the lives of Sacramento’s unhoused last summer and now. As a result, we had fewer reports of people suffering from the heat. But both last year and this year, the orders applied to the city and not the county. So now we’re going to go back to court and see if we can get the (current) order expanded to the county.
HCN: How will the homeless union's work evolve with climate change? Is there a more permanent solution than temporary halts to displacement?
AP: Addressing climate change is absolutely bound up in the fight for housing. We urge our local unions to go to city hall, the recorder’s office, the clerk, and go through the records. (This way, they can identify) the property the city owns and manages to get people housed immediately.
“Addressing climate change is absolutely bound up in the fight for housing.”
The city has paid for mass congregant shelters, so-called “safe-ground” tent cities and other measures that have not created housing or reduced the number of homeless persons, which went from almost 6,000 two years ago to over 9,700 today. If Sacramento (instead) purchased modular homes costing $35,000-$45,000 each and accommodating five persons per home, every officially counted homeless person in the city could be permanently housed at a cost of $93,000,000. That is not only a permanent solution, but an immediately available solution that is both feasible and cost-effective.
Ollie Hancock is an editorial intern for High Country News reporting from Portland, Oregon. Email them at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
