SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho is threatening charges again and this time he's targeting Camp Resolution, a property owned by the city and leased by a nonprofit to help house dozens of people.
Ho says the property is a health and safety hazard.
"What good does it do to say you can't be here, you can't be there, you can't be anywhere," said Mark Merin.
Merin is part of Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc. It's the nonprofit leasing the Camp Resolution space from the city to provide shelter to the unhoused.
Ho sent a letter to City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood and Merin Tuesday expressing his disappointment in the space.
"I don't think it served any functions, not positive, for the District Attorney to start saber rattling and say, 'We don't want them here,'" said Merin.
In the letter, Ho says toxic chemicals have been found at the site and could cause cancer. He says the initial agreement was to have safe parking for up to 50 vehicles on asphalt and no tents can sit directly on the ground. He says tents were seen on the ground last week but Merin and the Sacramento Homeless Union dispute those claims.
"There are no tents on the ground there and there are no skirts around the trailers, so I don't know what information he's relying on," said Merin.
Sacramento Homeless Union Attorney Anthony Prince said — in part — that Ho is a liar and the lab tests conducted in Jan. 2023 showed toxic chemicals weren't detected at the site.
Ho's letter comes months after he called out Mayor Darrell Steinberg for not addressing the city's homelessness issue fast enough.
Merin believes the new letter is another political move for Ho and says some of the language in in it is an over-exaggeration.
"I think that's just for maybe dramatic purposes," said Merin. "I would hope that the next step would be that there's something better for the people who are living there. It would be my hope that the city recognizes that there are drawbacks to the site."
Ho made it clear this criminal investigation is separate from the pending civil lawsuit he threatened a few months ago. A spokesperson for the city attorney's office would only say the city has received the letter and is in the process of evaluating its contents.
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