SACRAMENTO - Railroad 1900 filed a federal complaint on September 15 in the Eastern District of California against the City of Sacramento over the consequences of the city's homelessness problem.
According to the complaint, the City of Sacramento has chosen to deal with its situation by imposing a de facto policy of allowing certain regions of the city to serve as containment zones for the homeless. The area surrounding Railroad 1900's property is blighted, it says.
It has become a graveyard for abandoned vehicles, and its streets are lined with mobile homes, RVs, and other vehicles serving as housing, the suit says. The area is unsanitary, unsafe and otherwise constitutes a public and private nuisance to the property owners and any citizens passing through the area, the suit says.
The conditions prevailing in this area constitute a violation of the fundamental civil rights of those who own property in the area and those who work there, the suit says. Railroad 1900 claims that a city-wide, and frankly, a statewide, issue should not be allowed to disproportionately affect a few discrete neighborhoods in Sacramento and the City of Sacramento cannot simply abandon certain neighborhoods to spare other neighborhoods from having to deal with the homelessness epidemic, the suit says.
Railroad 1900 claims that the city refuses to enforce its own laws that prohibit the homeless from loitering, vandalizing, and otherwise inhabiting private property and the surrounding public property and it has caused Railroad 1900 to incur significant expenses cleaning the area,
Railroad 1900 is represented by Josh H. Escovedo.
U.S. District Court Eastern District of California case number 2:21-cv-01673-KJM-DB