Sacramento County clears way for 200 new tiny homes, funded by $18M state grant
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors moved forward this week with a $17.7 million “Safe Stay” tiny home site on Stockton Boulevard, where small cabins will accommodate up to 200 homeless people.
An additional 150 to 175 living pods provided by the state will be redirected from Cal Expo to the county’s Safe Stay site on Watt Avenue.
Emily Halcon, the director of the county’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing, told the supervisors at their Tuesday meeting that she expected to break ground on the Stockton Boulevard site as early as January. She said the cabins might not be ready for clients until the next fiscal year, which begins in the summer.
The site, which was previously announced and is part of the formal Sacramento city-county Homeless Services Partnership Agreement, will sit within the new 13-acre WellSpace Health campus at 6810 Stockton Blvd. Officials have emphasized that the sleeping cabins are not meant to serve as permanent housing, but rather stepping stones to permanent housing.
The county is uncertain whether it will be able to fit 200 beds, or whether it will be limited to 175 beds. The tiny homes have air conditioning but no plumbing.
Gov. Gavin Newsom promised Sacramento 350 of these cabins earlier this year. Whatever cabins the county can’t fit on Stockton Boulevard, Halcon said, will go to Watt Avenue.
At the meeting, board chair Rich Desmond said, “I think it’s OK for us to celebrate something like this, because it’s a step in the right direction. Without patting ourselves on the back, because we still have an awful lot of work to do.”
Halcon has said that for every one person who exits homelessness in Sacramento County, three more people become homeless. The county spent almost half its homelessness budget on emergency shelters last fiscal year. In November, the supervisors voted to spend $1.3 million on a Safe Stay parking lot, where up to 30 homeless people will be allowed to live in their cars without the constant threat of law enforcement telling them to leave.
That parking lot is on the same property that would contain the remaining 150 to 175 sleeping pods sent to the county by Newsom. Previously, the county and city had planned to place them at Cal Expo.
The property will be the county’s fourth Safe Stay site.
The money for the tiny homes will not come directly out of local coffers. The county’s homelessness department has already received a grant from the state’s Encampment Resolution Funding Program, which will cover the costs of the build-out and operations.
Most of the $17.7 million grant will go to operations and administration: Up to $14.6 million is slated for First Step Communities, which will operate the site, and $842,000 will go to county administrative services. The county is also paying WellSpace $2.2 million for a three-year lease of the lot.
According to the latest federally mandated homeless count, Sacramento County had more than 6,000 fewer shelter beds than it had homeless people — nearly 9,300 as of 2022.
The overall WellSpace site is not yet finished. The health care provider’s new campus will have an outpatient clinic, a behavioral health crisis center and a dental clinic, as well as a 200-bed substance use treatment facility.
