Tent cities have become part of the landscape in Sacramento, California and in cities across the nation. Safe Ground Sacramento is a community-organized group working to repeal stringent anti-camping laws and create a legally sanctioned campground. With the Mayor’s support, it may become one of the first cities to find a temporary, working solution to help those with nowhere else to go when the shelters are full.

“Tent City is less a single location than a nomadic but constant phenomenon, a shifting blue-tarped shadow to the glass and steel American metropolis,” writes Ben Ehenreich about Sacramento, California in “Tales of Tent City,” recently published in The Nation.

Today in Sacramento, the tent city, once reported to be as large as 300 people, has dispersed into much smaller, more hidden camps. Joan Burke is a housing advocate at Loaves and Fishes and a member of Safe Ground Sacramento. Both organizations work to help people in the city who are homeless and hungry.“The typical size,” says Joan, “is probably less than ten individuals in one spot.”

The official point-in-time count showed that there were 1,200 people without shelter of any kind on one night in January of 2009. Joan believes that the number has risen to 1,500 today. Nineteen percent of the people living in tents in Sacramento are veterans. Thirty-five percent are people who are homeless for the first time and for less than a year. “There is no room for everyone who wants to go to a shelter. One shelter is currently turning away over three hundred women and children a night in Sacramento,” says Joan.

“Sacramento has one of the most stringent anti-camping ordinances in the country. People are in constant fear of citation or arrest and no one wants to be an outlaw,” says Joan. The ordinance states that no one may camp on public or private property for more than twenty-four hours, even with permission of the property owner.

“The police are very cognizant of the fact that people have nowhere to go, and will give warnings, instead of arresting them. But the result is that people who are just surviving are hounded from place to place, with all of their meager belongings on their back. It is an extremely stressful existence and it severely inhibits the ability of someone to move out of homelessness,” says Joan. When people are under the pressure of moving nightly, much of their time and energy goes towards finding shelter rather than addressing service needs or searching for employment.

“I spent twenty-five years of my life building and repairing other people’s homes, and now I find myself without one,” says John Kraintz, one of the leaders and founders of Safe Ground Sacramento. The organization is comprised of people experiencing homelessness, advocates, businesses, legal counsel, and organizations that provide homeless services.

The group is leading efforts to establish a moratorium on the anti-camping ordinance, with support from Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. “The goal of Safe Ground Sacramento is to achieve a legal outdoor community sanctioned by the city and the county. It would be a place for people to live as a stepping stone towards permanent and more traditional housing,” offers Joan.

Last summer, Mayor Johnson convened a task force to develop recommendations related to a legal campground. “We identified several elements including permission from the government, internal self-governance by the residents of the site with a non-profit sponsor, sanitation, bathrooms and showers,” explains Joan Burke. People seeking shelter at the campground would be asked to abide by three requirements: no drugs, no alcohol, and no violence.

Safe Ground Sacramento has identified a location for a legal campsite, and will propose it to the Mayor’s task force for consideration. The site is on four acres owned by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency in a predominantly industrial area. The land has been unused for a decade, and is close to existing services. The group would like to have outreach workers from community agencies and a full-time on-site social worker who would help people transition out of homelessness.

“I don’t know that finding a home is necessarily about putting boards together with nails any longer. It seems the solution to finding a home can be found in community organizing efforts,” says John Kraintz.