THE MAYOR OF San Jose wants to penalize homeless people who refuse shelter by arresting or hospitalizing them, punting the service-resistant onto Santa Clara County for care.
Mayor Matt Mahan unveiled his “Responsibility to Shelter” initiative this past Thursday, where homeless people who choose not to accept shelter after three attempts within an 18-month period will be subject to arrest for trespassing. The goal is to send people to the behavioral health court system and compel them to get treatment. If adopted by the full San Jose City Council during the upcoming budget process, the policy would only apply to homeless people living near new shelters.
The city plans to add 1,000 shelter beds over the next year. Several housing sites are set to come online this year, including tiny homes on Cherry Avenue, Via Del Oro and an expanded Rue Ferrari. A sanctioned encampment near Watson Park is also opening soon. There are roughly 6,340 homeless residents in San Jose, with about 5,550 being unsheltered.
Mahan’s plan requires cooperation and coordination with the county in order for his plan to work. But with the county facing a shortage of mental health treatment beds, it will be difficult for homeless people to get the services they need.
“The city can’t do it alone,” Mahan said Thursday. “The county is a provider of health and human services. It has a robust drug and behavioral court system with experts who can help people find the best path forward. We need to get people into the care of the county if they are unwilling to accept housing from the city.”
A tragedy, not a crime
County Executive James Williams said the county remains committed to working with the city and other community partners to help vulnerable people access housing and services.
“Being without a home is not a crime, it’s a tragedy,” Williams told San José Spotlight. “And it certainly isn’t a reason to arrest someone.”
A Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said they don’t anticipate the proposal having any impact on the incarcerated population.
“We are not able to hold anyone in our facilities unless they’ve committed a serious criminal offense under the law,” the spokesperson told San José Spotlight. “Most likely, this would result in a citation and a release from custody.”
District 5 Councilmember Peter Ortiz questions how Mahan’s proposal will actually play out.
“Being without a home is not a crime, it’s a tragedy. And it certainly isn’t a reason to arrest someone.” James Williams, Santa Clara County Executive
“I do have serious questions about the feasibility of the mayor’s proposed strategy, including how enforcement will be funded during a challenging budget environment,” Ortiz told San José Spotlight. “The (San Jose Police Department) is already stretched thin, and we have laws on the books that are not being enforced. Adding responsibilities to an already overworked force is how we get to broken promises.”
Steve Slack, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, said the union supports Mahan’s proposal.
“We take in a lot of the homeless that are brought in for whatever offenses from all through the county when they get released from the jail or from (emergency psychiatric services),” Slack told San José Spotlight. “Well now they become San Jose’s problem, and they don’t make it back to whatever city that they were picked up from. That’s how the city of San Jose gets a bigger homeless population, and now we’re dealing with them on the street too.”
Overloading emergency services
Greg Tuyor, a battalion chief with the San Jose Fire Department, said the repeated calls firefighters and police officers deal with related to homeless people are pulling them away from other duties. He said the city received 10,000 calls involving homeless people last fiscal year, 2,000 of which were fires.
“That is not something that we are ready for or built to do,” Tuyor told San José Spotlight. “If we can relieve that stress from our members, it would do a lot to improving our service and the fatigue and stress that our firefighters face.”
But advocates and formerly homeless people have concerns that penalizing people living on the streets could create more trauma.
“The level of trauma that people have experienced while they’ve been living outside, in some cases (for) decades, is severe,” Ray Bramson, chief operating officer of Destination: Home and San José Spotlight columnist, told San José Spotlight. “I think the best way to address that is continued engagement, building relationships and having those relationships result in placements into whatever the appropriate setting is — whether it’s housing or shelter or a treatment facility.”
Mahan said 32% of homeless people living in an encampment near the city’s newest housing site that opened last month at 1 Branham Lane refused shelter. But Jodi Botkin, a formerly homeless resident who moved into the Branham site, said some people were left behind.
“Making it illegal isn’t right,” Botkin told San José Spotlight. “It’s going to make them worse off.”
Contact Joyce Chu at Joyce@sanjosespotlight.com or @joyce_speaks on X.
This story originally appeared in San Jose Spotlight.