The Sacramento Services Not Sweeps Coalition, a coalition of 110 individuals and organizations, including Loaves & Fishes, Sacramento Black Caucus, Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign, Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness and SafeGround, will be holding a candlelight vigil and march on Friday, February 5, 2021 beginning at 5 pm at City Hall to honor our three unhoused neighbors who died in the storm January 26 and 27, 2021. We will then march to the Board of Supervisors Hall of Administration and call on the Board of Supervisors to act with the same sense of urgency that the Mayor and City Council showed last week.
“It is tragic that it took the deaths of three of our unhoused neighbors for the Mayor and City Council to act with a sense of urgency and abandon the weather criteria to open warming centers, which we have been demanding for the past five years. Sadly, the Board of Supervisors has failed to act with the same sense of urgency.” said Joe Smith, Advocacy Director, Loaves & Fishes.
“Tonight we honor the deaths of our six unhoused neighbors we lost last week in the storm and remember the nearly 1,500 people experiencing homelessness, disproportionately people of color, who have died in our community over the past fifteen years,” said Faye Kennedy, Sacramento Poor Peoples Campaign.
“In the words of Mother Jones, ‘we mourn the dead and we will fight like hell for the living.’ It is unconscionable that the Board of Supervisors will not open up motel rooms until it is 37 degrees. Instead of being proud of their ‘weather-specific motel voucher program,’ they should be ashamed that they are not doing more to save the lives of our unhoused neighbors. Clearly the Board of Supervisors are showing their cold hearts during this cold and wet weather. It needs to end tonight,” said Bob Erlenbusch, Executive Director, Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness.
