Sacramento groundbreaking on Watt Ave campus to serve homeless population

Safe Stay Community to help people in various stages of homelessness”

Sacramento, Calif.- Sacramento County and its partners have officially broken ground on a large-scale campus that can serve the unhoused population with diverse offerings to help people in various stages of homelessness.

The 13-acre property on Watt Ave near Roseville Road, already equipped with a 130,000-square-foot warehouse, is designed as a mixed-use campus with shelter, respite, and safe parking. Behavioral Health services, co-located on-site with case management, storage, pet respite, laundry services, showers, bathrooms, job training, and more, will complete the vision of having a dynamic, multi-use, co-located facility to serve the unhoused population.

Watt Ave / Roseville Road

Large-scale campus-style shelter

“This is a project we’ve been working on for years – a large-scale campus-style shelter that will serve hundreds of people at a time and address the diverse needs each of them have,” said Rich Desmond, County Supervisor District 3. “Our staff is putting in extra time and attention to this campus, ensuring that it houses everything we need to end homelessness for people.”

The Watt Campus will have the capacity to host (at any given time):

225 beds in Safe Stay cabins
50-person capacity in Safe Parking
75-person capacity for emergency/weather respite beds

Estimated Costs

Conservative estimates, based on the data from other county sheltering and respite projects, show that over 15 years, the Watt Campus will serve 18,000 people – which pencils out the cost to less than $3600 per person – a drastic reduction to what it costs to leave people unhoused and burden the cost of response.

The Watt Campus’s size and configuration offer a unique opportunity to serve folks immediately exiting homelessness in the emergency/weather respite center and those more stabilized and working towards permanent housing in the Safe Stay cabins. Additionally, it will allow staff to serve people living in vehicles, which includes the working poor, and those who are only recently homeless.

Community-based supports

While having the space to serve folks at these different stages of their homeless experience, the site will allow for a myriad of community-based supports – behavioral health, physical health, employment services, treatment services (and many more) – to co-locate at the site and support clients towards a permanent exit from homelessness.

Watt will be the County’s fourth Safe Stay Community, with other locations in south Sacramento at Florin, East Parkway and on Stockton Blvd. In addition to these shelters, the County also has scattered site shelter homes across the County, as well as several other sheltering programs. The County continues to pursue new and innovative programs and services to address homelessness, stretch limited funding and partner with its cities, community-based organizations and local non-profits in the mission to end homelessness.