The Bee published an article yesterday that bubbled and gushed about the new tiny homes (AKA Steiny Homes) being built at the City of Sacramento's Roseville Road homeless facility. That facility opened in early 2024 with 60 Steiny Homes and 40 travel trailers as a relocation site for the people who had been camping at Miller Park. Now the travel trailers are being removed to make room for 135 more Steiny Homes. While that's clearly an increase in the number of possible residents, the City of Sacramento previously said the site's capacity would be 240. So there's that.

But consider also:

• Though, to its credit, the City of Sacramento has implemented some on-site services for residents of the Roseville Road facility, the facility is not a prison. Residents are free to come and go. Roseville Road is generally inhospitable to the west of the site, what with the Sheriff's workforce program at the adjacent light rail station and the vehicles speeding by on the shoulderless road. Train tracks parallel Roseville Road on the north. Beyond the tracks north of the site is the runway at McClellan Park - protected by a chain link fence. Anyone wandering about beyond the site would either go east along Roseville Road (an industrial area with a garbage transfer station) or cross the freeway on the Longview Drive overpass that eventually goes by a recycle center and a smattering of businesses until it reaches Watt Avenue. Along that pathway is the open space on the north side of Arcade Creek plus a network of horse trails associated with the Horsemens Association. The golf course lies behind a fence on the other side of Arcade Creek.  A coffee shop, a convenience store and several fast-food restaurants are located in the unincorporated area where Longview Drive meets Watt Avenue. The unincorporated area properties near the Watt and Longview intersection and east of the site are obvious everyday destinations for facility residents.
• The Roseville Road facility has become a magnet for new homeless encampments in the immediate vicinity of the site. In addition to the residents, there are car campers and tents close to the facility. Social interaction is as important to unhoused individuals as anyone else. There is nothing to stop facility residents from meeting with other people once outside the facility.
• We have no evidence of drug use at the facility or at the nearby encampments. Therefore, we do not make claims about used needles in the area, including on the horse trails or along the creek. Other people, however, have expressed concerns about used needles. They have a point of view that might be correct.
• The City of Sacramento has a massive homeless problem compared to other parts of the county - 1,000s vs 100s. It also has a public policy geared towards camp clean-ups and enforcement that pushes the unhoused population away from downtown Sacramento, Midtown, Land Park and East Sacramento towards the very edges of the City and, thus, to and into our community.

Like other hastily-implemented homeless facilities on the edge of our community, the Roseville Road site has been an attractive nuisance. It has stimulated more encampments and led to more of the negative aspects of homelessness - litter, panhandling and and sanitation concerns are noticible in the vicinity. Adding more Steiny Homes there will probably exacerbate the existing situation for our community. Why does the City of Sacramento continue to establish and expand places like this on our doorstep instead of within the city's residential areas? Because they can. Expansion of the Roseville Road facility just continues the movement of "undesired" people from "important" parts of the City of Sacramento to our unimportant, unincorporated community. What are your thoughts about that?