District: Caltrans Headquarters
Caltrans Contact: Tamie McGowen
Phone: (916) 501-3547
City of Sacramento Contact: Mary Lynne Vellinga
Phone: (916) 599-3724
SACRAMENTO – Working in collaboration with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, Caltrans will pause encampment cleanups scheduled for next week in the City of Sacramento to allow city officials additional time to identify all available options as we work together to locate resources and collaborate on solutions to help people living alongside our roadways. Prior to each cleanup, Caltrans will work with the city and county to consider resources available for people at the encampments while leveraging the funding recently approved through Governor Newsom’s California Comeback Plan.
Caltrans’ role is to ensure the safety of the travelling public and to protect and maintain California’s highway infrastructure. Occasionally, the department must proceed with the relocation of an encampment if there is an immediate safety concern or threat to local infrastructure. In those instances, Caltrans works closely to support local agencies’ efforts to connect individuals living in encampments with resources for safer living conditions as available to keep the individuals and our freeways safe.
Caltrans and the City of Sacramento have established a good relationship and recently collaborated on the opening of a 100-bed emergency homeless shelter on Alhambra at X Street and finding an alternate location for an encampment that had to be moved because of a highway construction project.
Since Mayor Steinberg took office four and a half years ago, the City of Sacramento has greatly expanded its effort to get unsheltered people into housing and services. The City has added 1,050 shelter beds, tiny homes and safe ground camping spaces since 2020, along with nearly 400 motel rooms that provide transitional shelter. The City Council in August passed a Comprehensive Siting Plan to Address Homelessness that includes sites and strategies to create than 5,000 new beds, roofs and safe spaces.
Mayor Steinberg thanked Caltrans for collaborating with local agencies on how to provide alternatives to people living at encampments near highways.
“I’m grateful we have a governor who has put more resources into combating this problem than any governor in history. We are committed to working with Caltrans to make sure it can perform its public functions while at the same time working together to provide real alternatives for people living adjacent to or under the freeway.”