SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A property owner tells ABC10 he is working with the City of Sacramento to give trespassing notices to people who are camping on his land.
ABC10 first reported on this story back in early January. Neighbors reached out to ABC10 with complaints about an encampment of people experiencing homelessness along Ripley Street near South Avenue. The property straddles Sacramento’s East Del Paso Heights and Hagginwood neighborhoods.
At the time, property owner Alex Belz told ABC10 he worked with city officials and law enforcement to clean up the area on two occasions yet the encampment returned.
“I think it would be better if the response would be much quicker from the police department,” he told ABC10 back in January.
In a follow-up story Tuesday, Belz told ABC10 that since early January, the city has “been very responsive and I’m happy.” He says he's waiting for the city to schedule a date to deliver trespassing notices to the people camping on his property, giving them three days to leave once they receive the notice.
Belz says he plans on coming in after that with heavy equipment to clear any remaining belongings.
Once he and the city clear or “sweep” the encampment, Belz plans on having a caretaker move onto the property to ensure it stays vacant until he is ready to begin developing it. He told ABC10 back in January he plans on splitting the parcel into 16 lots and building single-family homes.
ABC10 spoke with people living in the encampment and an advocate who brings food to them Tuesday to hear their side of the story.
“I was camped out here in my little six-person tent right here,” said Jessamy Cartwright, who – up until a few weeks ago – used to live in the encampment.
“We call it Ripley Field. The corner of Ripley Street and South Avenue,” Cartwright explained.
A few weeks ago, she got an apartment in Sacramento’s newly opened Saint Clare at Capitol Park, which is permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness.
“I actively tried for five years to get off the street. Actively. Like, every day calling people, emailing people – the nonprofits, charities, you know, anybody I could,” Cartwright said. “Pleading for help. You’ve got to stick with it and just keep trying, and eventually something will happen.”
Cartwright lost her home in the 2018 Camp Fire and lost her leg from an injury she got while escaping the flames.
“It was a traumatic escape that I went through,” she said. “I came here to Sacramento County thinking that this is state's capital and I could find the most resources to help me get housed.”
Getting resources and finding housing can be a complicated, lengthy process.
“I know people who have been out here for 22 years and I'm the second person they've known to be housed,” Cartwright said.
More than 5,000 people are experiencing homelessness within the city of Sacramento, according to the 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. That number rises to more than 9,000 when looking at the entire county.
The 2024 PIT Count just happened, and while results won’t be out for several months, advocates say they expect to see those numbers grow.
The people living along Ripley Street are camping on private property. The property owner and some neighbors ABC10 interviewed back in January want them gone.
But one advocate tells ABC10, “these are just folks trying to live their lives. They're just trying to be stable.”
Known to folks experiencing homelessness as “the Bread Lady,” this advocate – who asked ABC10 to identify her as such to protect her privacy given the sensitive nature of her work – runs a mutual aid group called the Awkward Gardener’s Community Table. Through that, she serves people experiencing food insecurity and regularly brings meals to this camp along Ripley Street. She says sweeping an encampment is disruptive.
“If folks understood the amount of trauma that individuals go through living out on the streets and how situations like sweeps continue to perpetuate and re-traumatize - and how that can further inhibit folks from getting out of this situation - perhaps we would see more movement in creating systems and services and resources that focus on helping them instead of re-traumatizing them,” said the Bread Lady. “I think instead of looking at people as the problem, we look at the system as the problem.”
Cartwright, who was back visiting her former fellow campmates Tuesday, says she wants the public to know “we're not hardened criminals out here…We're just people trying to survive.”
She wants her situation – as a recently housed person – to be a beacon of hope to the people still living at Ripley Field.
“Don't give up and think that you're not going to get housed. Just hang in there,” Cartwright said. “A lot of people are living check-to-check. And if one of those checks fails, they can be right out here with us. And it's so hard. Once you get out here, it is so much harder to pull yourself out of it. It’s extremely hard.”
People become unhoused for many different reasons, she said.
“Just because we don't have a house doesn't make us any different than anybody else. We all have feelings. We're all people. We have stories. We have lives,” Cartwright said. “We have hearts. We actually do care and just because we don't have a home doesn't mean we don't have self-respect. We're all just people.”
For now, the Bread Lady says people living at the encampment will likely have to prepare themselves to be moved by the city and private property owner.
“While it’s easy to say, ‘Just sweep them’ or ‘Go somewhere else’ or ‘Just figure it out,’ there is nowhere to go,” she said. “That is one of the difficulties that advocates are facing.”
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