According to the city of Sacramento's Homeless Count, on any given night approximately 2,700 people are on the streets.

This troublesome data has called members of St. John's Lutheran Church – a member of PICO affiliate Sacramento Area Congregations Together – to action. In July they convened over 160 community members at the church to ask City Councilmember Steve Cohn to lead the way in providing more affordable housing for Sacramento's most vulnerable populations.

After seeing a huge increase in the number of people seeking assistance from a homeless shelter the church had founded in the 1980s, they decided to focus their efforts on increasing affordable housing in the city. After careful research, they launched an effort to expand Sacramento's existing Mixed Income Housing Ordinance city-wide. The current Ordinance, which requires new developments to include at least 15 percent of their housing units at prices affordable to low and very low income households, only applies to certain areas of the city, mostly on the outskirts.

At their July action, Councilmember Cohn committed to use his position to expand the policy city-wide and to set aside a certain amount of the affordable housing created through the ordinance for extremely low income households. This fall, St. John's will be working with Cohn to form a taskforce to work out the details of the expanded policy, coming one step closer to a city where everyone has a place to call home.