The Sacramento Bee
Realtor Katherine “KC” Schuft is seeking to unseat longtime Sacramento City Councilman Eric Guerra in this year’s election.
Schuft became interested in running for council after her Colonial Heights neighborhood lost a designated council member in 2022 due to a once a decade redistricting process.
“We were left in the cold to fend for ourselves,” Schuft said.
Schuft started a group called Colonial Heights Neighborhood Coalition, which now has roughly 60 members working to improve the south Sacramento neighborhood, she said. At the top of their list is urging city leaders to remodel and reopen the bathrooms at Colonial Park.
“Our children deserve safe clean bathrooms that aren’t abused and locked all the time,” said Schuft, 48. “We have 26 parks in a city that’s so park-focused but the budget for parks is not more than it is? Everything we learned since creating this coalition has made me realize how broken Sacramento is on many levels.”
Despite her profession, Schuft does not want the city’s rent control ordinance, called the Tenant Protection Program, to expire at the end of this year, she said.
That’s part of why she does not plan to accept money the Sacramento Association of Realtors, which has endorsed Guerra this year, as it has in the past.
“I’m not a typical realtor,” Schuft said. “My ideals do not align with the Association of Realtors, either in Sacramento or nationally.”
She also does not plan to accept money from special interest groups of any kind, such as the police union, only private individuals.
Schuft does not want the city’s police budget, which hit an all time high $228 million in the current year, to keep increasing, she said. She is undecided if she wants it to decrease, however.
On the city’s most pressing topic of homelessness, Schuft said she wants the city to open more shelters and Safe Ground sites to provide the unhoused with bathrooms, drinking water and security while they wait for a coveted affordable housing unit.
“It’s unbelievable to me that we have around 10,000 unhoused people in Sacramento and 2,400 on the wait list,” Schuft said, referring to the number of people currently on the waiting list for one of the city’s roughly 1,300 shelter beds, according to a staff presentation to the council earlier this month.
“If each district could just open two Safe Ground sites we could at least get on top of this,” Schuft said. “(Affordable) housing that’s been approved isn’t gonna be ready for months or years. What do we do in meantime? We can’t just keep sweeping.”
The council five months ago directed City Manager Howard Chan to unilaterally open homeless shelters across the city. Earlier this month he announced the first, in North Sacramento.
Despite his announcement to open the large shelter, Schuft criticized the council-approved raise for Chan in December in a meeting that violated The Brown Act. The council has since tabled the raise and has changed its rules to stop the same process from repeating in the future, but Guerra voted in favor of the raise originally, Schuft pointed out.
In addition to Schuft and Guerra, paralegal David Drelinger and plumbing business owner Kevin Rooney are also running for the seat.
The primary will be held March 5. If no single candidate receives at least 50.01% of the vote, the winner will be determined in the general election Nov. 5.
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