Sacramento’s police sweeps are a public health crisis for the unhoused | Opinion

The city of Sacramento is facing a public health crisis, and people experiencing homelessness are bearing the brunt of this damaging political battle. Police sweeps are not new to Sacramento, but the city’s enforcement policies have recently changed.

Sweeps are a city-sanctioned removal of housing encampments, which is only legal in California when adequate alternative housing is offered. That is not the case in Sacramento.

Despite the rate of homelessness in Sacramento outpacing the availability of affordable housing, with 2,400 shelter beds for the 9,200 people experiencing homelessness locally, the city is focused on bolstering protections for enforcing police sweeps.

One of us has seen firsthand the detriment of police sweeps while volunteering at the Willow Clinic student-run clinic. Following a sweep, our weekly clinic census dropped from a total capacity of about 13 patients to a single patient one week later.

Volunteers spend countless hours conducting outreach to build trust with people living in encampments near our clinics and ask these community members to leave their belongings momentarily to share a highly vulnerable moment to discuss their health with us. This is no small ask, and this trust is quickly lost when patients experience displacement and the unexpected loss of their possessions.

Sacramento claims to be tackling the problem of rising homelessness with innovation, but healthcare workers in the community are clearly witnessing the harm being done to this community.

Opinion

In June 2023, Sacramento implemented a ranking system to assign priority for removing and relocating encampments of people experiencing homelessness. Ranking criteria included proximity to schools and critical infrastructure, violation of the City of Sacramento Sidewalk Ordinance or Park Curfew and Park Use Ordinance and blockage of public utilities. This process lacks transparency. As a result, our citizens, regardless of housing status, are suffering since there is no advance notice for these displacement efforts.

Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho is now leveraging a lawsuit against the city to push for greater enforcement of sweeps. In this time of legislative uncertainty, it is vital that the people of Sacramento understand the negative medical implications of the decisions currently being made by our elected officials.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association clearly documented the medical and emotional detriment sweeps cause. On an individual level, sweeps can strip people experiencing homelessness of their medications and other supplies while forcibly removing them from their established healthcare network, risking trauma and possible hospitalization to reestablish their medical treatments.

On a systematic level, emergency department visits increase to collect necessary supplies and equipment. This puts an additional burden of costs on the taxpayer, both in covering the emergent medical costs for a largely uninsured patient population and in utilizing costly services to transport these community members for emergency care.

The city of Sacramento has a uniquely robust system of free, student-run clinics which operate weekly and are entirely staffed by volunteers, including undergraduate students, medical students and supervising physicians. Community members often visit for chronic life-sustaining needs, such as medications and wound care, that are otherwise virtually inaccessible for this population which often lacks insurance or reliable transportation. Many encampments are located near student-run clinics, which are working on the front-lines of this crisis to mitigate the medical harm caused by these police sweeps.

So, how do we remedy this crisis without placing the burden on people experiencing homelessness? With no easily accessible list of encampment priority ranking, community providers are not able to prepare our patients for impending sweeps. Transparency is key. Rather than spending taxpayer funds on costly sweeps, those funds should be spent adding much needed respite resources and shelter beds — a critical change in policy.

Until more accessible housing is available, sweeps will continue to serve the sole purpose of shuffling people experiencing homelessness around the city. And until sweeps stop entirely, anyone paying taxes or experiencing homelessness will continue to be harmed. Sweeps do not solve this crisis; it is prolonging this crisis.

Joseph Morrison is an MD/PhD student at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Sharad Jain is the associate dean for students and a professor of medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine.