SouthernWorldwide.com – The homelessness crisis in America is frequently presented as a housing shortage. This perspective, however, is inaccurate.
The crisis is, in fact, a consequence of the breakdown of accountability across all levels of the system. The most stark manifestations of this systemic failure are evident in California, and particularly in its capital, Sacramento.
In 2016, California became the only state to officially adopt the federal government’s Housing First mandate as its exclusive taxpayer-funded strategy for addressing homelessness. This approach funnels billions of state and federal dollars into subsidized apartments for life, without any requirement for sobriety, treatment, or employment.
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Sacramento County followed suit in 2017, embracing this housing-centric model. This occurred despite repeated warnings from those working directly with the homeless population, who cautioned that housing alone would be insufficient to address the underlying issues of addiction, mental illness, trauma, and behavioral health challenges that often accompany homelessness.
These warnings have proven to be tragically prescient.
Under this mandate, homelessness has increased by nearly 35% nationwide. In California, the surge has been even more dramatic, with a 40% increase. In Sacramento County specifically, the homeless population has more than doubled.
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Beyond the raw numbers, what has become increasingly alarming is the societal acceptance of human deterioration, environmental degradation, escalating encampments, and widespread public disorder. This has occurred as accountability and expectations have been systematically removed from the system.
The fundamental issue was never solely a lack of housing, nor was the solution simply providing apartments.
Waterways, parks, and sidewalks did not devolve into neglected areas due to a shortage of housing. Instead, they suffered due to a policy framework that systematically excluded recovery, restoration, and accountability from the core of homelessness initiatives.
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The predictable outcome has been the proliferation of tens of thousands of discarded needles and shopping carts across rivers, canals, and public spaces. Encampments have effectively become government-sanctioned waiting areas for permanent housing that often never materializes.
When vulnerable individuals are left without treatment or purpose for extended periods, social decay takes hold. What should be a cause for public outrage becomes normalized.
This is precisely what was observed in Sacramento last week. A colleague and I spent a day working with the River City Waterway Alliance, a volunteer group primarily composed of retirees who have become a critical line of defense in protecting Sacramento’s waterways from environmental collapse. On another day, we assisted the Sacramento County Sheriff’s HOT Team, which removed an estimated 5,000 pounds of waste from a canal that had been cleared just a month prior.
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One conclusion became inescapable: America’s homelessness crisis is fundamentally a crisis of zero accountability. Sacramento serves as a clear indicator of what happens when accountability disintegrates, ideology supplants tangible outcomes, and leaders fail to confront the repercussions of their own policies.
The realities observed in Sacramento alone paint a stark picture:
Over the past three years, volunteers with the Alliance have removed nearly 4 million pounds of waste from Sacramento waterways, including 29,000 needles, 19,000 shopping carts, and over 70,000 batteries.
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During the same period, the death rate among the homeless population more than doubled.
In a single year, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s HOT Team visited nearly 4,600 camps, closed over 1,300 of them, and cleared 3 million pounds of trash from homeless encampments.
Despite the efforts of volunteers and law enforcement to mitigate the fallout, Sacramento’s homeless population grew by an additional 13% last year alone, adding another 1,000 individuals. This further exacerbates a crisis that the region was already struggling to manage.
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The deterioration is accelerating at a pace that far outstrips containment efforts. The sheer magnitude of the destruction is nearly incomprehensible unless witnessed firsthand.
However, the most heart-wrenching aspect was walking the streets of Sacramento and observing individuals visibly deteriorating physically, mentally, and spiritually, with passersby barely taking notice. There was no shock, no outrage, no gasp. In Sacramento, this level of suffering and societal breakdown has become accepted.
Yet, none of this was an unavoidable outcome.
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For years, volunteers from the River City Waterway Alliance implored local and state leaders to address the escalating environmental destruction occurring along Sacramento’s waterways. Concurrently, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have established a dedicated set-aside for sober living housing. This action was taken despite pleas from individuals battling addiction, frontline service providers, and mayors across California who emphasized the state’s urgent need for more recovery-focused options within its homelessness system.
To their credit, the city and county are now taking action. However, repeated appeals to the governor, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and even the Sacramento chapter of the Sierra Club—organizations with significant influence and stated missions directly related to these issues—were met with silence.
Crickets.
Simultaneously, the Sheriff’s HOT Team, which is actively working to contain the destruction, now faces potential cuts as county leaders grapple with a $100 million budget deficit.
This situation clearly illustrates the current priorities of the system and the elected officials overseeing it.
Today, Sacramento stands as a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation, illustrating the consequences of stripping away accountability, leaders refusing to acknowledge the outcomes of their failed policies, and voters continuing to re-elect those same leaders even as human suffering, environmental devastation, public disorder, and societal collapse accelerate visibly.
That is the true crisis. Not merely homelessness. Not simply the lack of housing.
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It is the fundamental collapse of accountability itself.
