SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Downtown Sacramento businesses said despite ongoing efforts, they're constantly dealing with a multitude of problems due to the homeless population.
They said it's deterring business and embarrassing those who live in the capital city. They describe it as a zombie land, where people don't feel safe to come down.
It's been almost four years since the coronavirus pandemic, and the aftermath of an influx of homeless living downtown is still affecting businesses.
"Unfortunately, a lot of times they're sitting on steps, maybe peeping in front of our entrances, defecating. Then they get food, and then they eat and then they sometimes will take a nap. It's sometimes unsettling," said Marques Davison, the building manager of Capitol Event Center at the M.A.Y. on K Street in downtown Sacramento.
He said a lot of the unhoused hang out in the area because they're fed at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.
"There's other folks that maybe are just coming to eat food or coming downtown to even work, and they feel like they're not safe to really walk around downtown after hours. Or, they need to have an escort to their vehicle or worry about parking or parking in parking garages because of their safety," said Davison.
Davison also said this deters visitors from coming downtown.
He and many other businesses said the Downtown Sacramento Partnership is doing what it can to help mitigate issues.
"One of the things that we learned was, especially as some of these social issues have become more visible, that we needed to increase capacity with our clean and safe teams from presser washing, graffiti removal," said Michael Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
But at the end of the day, the challenges are just too big for one organization to handle.
"With the people that are on the streets, they need help, they need support, but also economic development and the development community and business community need support too. We need to continue to look at this as how do we help both sides," said Ault.
The partnership and businesses said they're hopeful, but more always needs to be done.
"There's owners that are really digging in and that's great. It'd be great to see some of the city dig in as well and really do more than maybe what's expected of them, because that's what the ownerships are doing down here," said Davison.
Sacramento police said their downtown area bike unit and central Problem Oriented Policing team work closely with businesses and local partners to address concerns.
ABC10 also reached out to the Department of Community Response but the inquiry was not immediately returned.
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