SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tammy Couisan lost everything over the past four months.
Her wife, Christine, died four days before Christmas.
Then her poodle Toto died.
She lost her shelter on Feb. 22, too, when a city of Sacramento-run motel evicted her.
Ten days later, she died in a tent.
Her friends this month are mourning her passing. Christine and Tammy Couisan’s deaths hit the homeless community especially hard because they were well-known homeless activists who worked to raise awareness about the struggles unhoused people face.
“While every unhoused individual that passes on the street is painful, this one was a devastating blow,” said Crystal Sanchez, president of the Sacramento Homeless Union. “The union holds the city of Sacramento accountable. We demand no more death on the streets to those experiencing homelessness due to a failed system.”
Activists also are outraged about Tammy Couisan’s death because she had been living safely in the city-run shelter program for months.
They believe she was evicted because of a minor rule violation, although the city will not verify whether she was kicked out or disclose the reason.
In March 2020, activists posted a video online of Tammy Couisan, who at the time was sleeping under the W-X freeway with Christine. The couple had been sleeping in a vehicle, but the police towed it because it was not registered to them, she said. Tammy Couisan sat in a camping chair wearing a pink knit hat and Oklahoma City Thunder jacket as she expressed her exhaustion. At that time, she had been on the streets for seven months.
“I am so tired moving from place to place every single day,” Tammy Couisan said in the video. “Enough is enough enough is enough. I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m so tired. I’m so tired.”
The shelter program gave the Couisans a chance to stop moving, with a roof over their heads and a lock on their door. After Christine died, Tammy was able to stay in the room.
“The motel was way better, for her stability, mentally and physically, for her well being,” said Jessica Gilbert, a friend who also said she was evicted from the motel shelter. “You’re putting people back on the street. She just lost her wife. People don’t understand how it is to just lose somebody and feel like you just lost everything.”
The city of Sacramento and Sacramento County each provide shelter to unhoused people in motels through different programs. They serve just a fraction of the county’s homeless population, which one unofficial survey estimates to be about 10,000.
Residents of the motels can get access to services, and they are required to comply with a variety of rules regarding guests, curfews and other activities.
Of 1,310 people who have stayed at the city motel shelters since December of 2020, 152 were exited because of non-compliance with rules and/or non-engagement in programming and other services offered to them, said Gregg Fishman, a city spokesman.
“The rules are aimed at keeping the locations private and safe for everyone in the program,” Fishman said. “Our contract operators take the rules seriously, but they also have great compassion for the clients and consistently work with them if there are issues related to following the rules. For minor and moderate problems, there are always second and third chances and often more. However, if a participant cannot follow the rules, even after being given several chances to do so, or if there is criminal activity or violence, then we consider that to be their choice to not continue in the program.”
It’s an issue that occurred at the Project Roomkey motels as well, which the county opened under a state program when the coronavirus pandemic struck.
During the first year of that program in Sacramento, out of 1,338 people who had spent time in the motels at the time, about 250 people had been kicked out. That included about 65 people who were kicked out because of criminal activity, while the rest were kicked out due to noncompliance with a variety of rules.
‘She didn’t want to go’
Christine Couisan was one of nearly 200 unhoused people who died in Sacramento last year — a record number, according to a Sacramento Bee analysis. A whopping 25% of them were Black, compared with 9% of county residents who are Black, reflecting how homelessness disproportionately affects Sacramento’s Black community.
Christine had been living with Tammy in the motel shelter and died at a hospital, family and friends said. The cause of her death has not yet been determined.
Tammy Couisan carried on at the shelter for months after her wife’s death, until she lost her space over what she described to a friend as a trivial issue.
On Feb. 22 — the day before Tammy was scheduled to move to another motel shelter — she told a friend motel management kicked her out for putting a small trash can in the hallway, said Billy Price Jr., a friend who was also staying at the motel.
“She was hurtin’ when she got kicked out (of the shelter),” said Price, who said he was there when it happened. “She didn’t know why they did it for such a petty reason. They rushed her out of there. She didn’t want to go.”
Couisan stayed with her niece a few nights, and Price paid for a motel for her for two nights. But then he ran out of money.
In the first week in March, she started sleeping in a blue tent on a strip of dirt next to the parking lot of a South Sacramento shopping center.
Temperatures dropped into the 40s — cold, but not cold enough for the city or county to open warming centers.
“She didn’t want to be by herself,” Price said. “I stayed with her. It was real cold that night. I bought her a jacket. She’d try to bundle up in it and she’d still be cold.”
She squirted out hand sanitizer on to aluminum foil — a trick Christine taught her to keep the tent warm. But it didn’t provide much relief.
After three nights in the tent, Price found her dead. When the ambulance came to confirm it, he broke down, wailing against a wood fence.
The county coroner has not yet determined what caused her death.
Call for year-round Sacramento shelters
Homeless advocates say Couisan’s death underscores why they want the city and county to open year-round weather respite centers, and also to loosen motel shelter rules.
“It points yet again for the millionth time as to why we need year-round warming and cooling centers to keep people safe and alive,” said Bob Erlenbusch of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness.
The City Council earlier this month voted to open a homeless warming center in North Sacramento, but only when the low hits 37 degrees or less for two or more days in a five-day span, or when certain other rain criteria is met.
Sandra Dykes, Tammy Couisan’s mother, said she might not have died if she had been indoors.
“She shouldn’t have been kicked out like that,” said Dykes, 63, of South Carolina. “Nobody should be kicked out of that program. If you’re in that program to be helped, why are you being kicked out for not doing nothing?”
After Couisan’s death, Price placed flowers in the chain-link fence next to where the tent had been. He stuck a colorful pinwheel in the ground, which spun fast in the wind Monday while he played “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa on a small black speaker.
He doesn’t cry as much anymore, but while he was talking about how guilty he felt for her death, a yellow butterfly flew to the pinwheel. He started to tear up.
“She’s here with me,” he said.
