Two disabled residents of Sacramento, Calif., are suing the city, claiming that its failure to relocate homeless camps that are blocking sidewalks is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“In the past several years, the unsheltered population of Sacramento has increased substantially,” Louis Demas, an attorney representing the residents, told the Sacramento Bee after filing the lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court.
The two plaintiffs, Susan Hood, who is legally blind, and Chester McNabb, who has difficulty walking and uses an electric scooter, need access to the sidewalks to get around. But the explosion of homeless camps has made it dangerous for them to navigate the city.
“I just don’t want to find myself in an unrepairable situation,” McNabb told CBS Sacramento. “They need to be tougher. They need to be better. They need to be more understanding, more credible.”
Due to the city’s negligence, many Sacramento sidewalks are “blocked by tent encampments and attendant debris (often including toxic and used hypodermic needles), and unleashed animals rendering the sidewalks inaccessible, dangerous, and unsanitary for people with mobility disabilities,” the lawsuit states.
Demas is seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, because unsafe sidewalks may affect as many as 200,000 disabled Sacramento residents, according to the lawsuit. About 12 percent of city and county residents are considered disabled, the lawsuit states.
In August, Sacramento’s city council approved the removal of homeless encampments that block building entrances or don’t allow a 4-foot-wide path on sidewalks. But Demas insists the city has “taken only limited action” to alleviate the problem.
“Since the onset of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic and the corresponding economic downturn, the number of such persons camping on the streets of the Defendant City, and Defendant County, has exponentially exploded,” the lawsuit states.
A similar lawsuit was filed last fall against the City of Portland, Ore., where disabled residents have been harassed and assaulted while navigating homeless camps on city sidewalks. The class-action lawsuit was filed in September in the U.S. District Court on behalf of ten plaintiffs accusing Portland of violating the ADA as well as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
“The target is not the unsheltered people,” John DiLorenzo, a lawyer behind the lawsuit, told National Review. “We want them to be sheltered in a humane way. Our adversaries are the politicians who are adopting policies that only encourage what we loosely call the homeless industrial complex.”
DiLorenzo’s team has alleged that local officials are partially responsible for creating the situation because they provided tens of thousands of tents, tarps, and sleeping bags to homeless residents. DiLorenzo is calling for a court order requiring the city to construct or purchase emergency shelters to get homeless residents off the sidewalks and out of camps.
On Thursday, Portland leaders entered a round of mediation with DiLorenzo and his legal team. DiLorenzo told an ABC affiliate that they were getting close to a possible resolution.