At SV@Home, we are committed to advancing proven solutions to the homelessness crisis across all of Santa Clara County’s jurisdictions—proven solutions rooted in equity, compassion, and the health of our community and all its members. As we urgently address the trauma that our unhoused neighbors endure, we must compel local decision-makers to invest in the data-driven, evidence-based approaches to preventing and responding to homelessness that we know work. We look to our elected leaders to  fully fund the continuum of housing we need for everyone to thrive. 

All of our county’s residents, regardless of income or ability, deserve safe, stable, and dignified housing they can afford. Research supports this approach as both far more effective in keeping people housed and a more cost effective approach to homelessness than approaches that rely on enforcement, including encampment sweeps, fines, arrest, and incarceration. SV@Home’s mission is to build collective power and advocate for systems change to achieve true housing affordability and justice across Santa Clara County. As a leading housing advocacy organization in the county, we want to be clear about the root causes of our current crisis and the solutions we need to achieve housing justice for all. 

The Root Causes of Homelessness

Abundant research shows that homelessness is the result of housing shortage and structural inequities, which can have enormous impact in the lives of people in marginalized communities. Overlapping social identities such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation often compound experiences of discrimination. ¹Understanding the way these identities intersect allows policymakers to expose the structural root causes and racial disparities of the housing problem and to effectively craft policies and actionable solutions, abandoning approaches that place blame, shame, and punishment on the individual. 

The National Alliance to End Homelessness,² the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative,³ the Urban Institute,⁴ and many other academic research sources agree that the key factors driving homelessness are:

• Lack of Affordable Housing: Santa Clara County has one of the highest housing costs in the nation, with median rents exceeding $3,000 per month.⁵ High rent and low rental vacancy rates correlate with high rates of homelessness; other common explanations (drug use, mental illness, poverty, or local political context) fail to account for regional variation in the rate of homelessness.⁶ In a 2020 study, researchers in the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that a $100 increase in median rent was associated with a 9% increase in the estimated homelessness rate.⁷ While affordable housing could help protect families from becoming unhoused, in Santa Clara County, there is a deep shortage of affordable housing, with only 33 affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income households.⁸
• Racial Disparities in Housing and Employment: Historic redlining, ongoing discrimination, and predatory lending practices have left communities of color with fewer opportunities for homeownership and wealth accumulation.⁹ Despite Santa Clara County’s booming tech economy, 38% of workers earn less than a living wage.¹⁰ Women, Latino, and Black workers are overrepresented in low-wage jobs, making them more vulnerable to housing insecurity.¹¹ Black renters face eviction at more than twice the rate of white renters nationwide.¹² Ongoing impacts of structural racism place communities of color at increased risk for homelessness. ¹³
• Insufficient Mental Health and Addiction Services: Many individuals cannot access timely mental health care or addiction support, leading to deteriorating conditions that jeopardize employment and housing stability. California lags behind the national average in providing mental health services, with only 37% of adults with mental illness receiving care.¹⁴ As a result, people with serious mental illness or substance use disorders may not get help until they are already in crisis, by which time they may be homeless or incarcerated. Without adequate mental health services, many people with serious behavioral health challenges end up in jail or on the streets rather than in treatment.¹⁵
• Criminalization of Homelessness Creates More Barriers to Housing: The criminalization of homelessness has been widely documented as both ineffective and harmful. Studies show that local anti-homeless ordinances do not reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness.¹⁶ The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness finds that people who have been incarcerated are up to 13 times more likely to experience homelessness, and people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be jailed simply for doing what others are able to do at home.¹⁷ People with criminal records are 10 times more likely to experience homelessness due to employment and housing discrimination.¹⁸ A cycle of arrest, release, and re-arrest is common and contributes to long-term homelessness. ¹⁹

Racial Disparities in Homelessness in Santa Clara County

Racial disparities in who experiences homelessness stem from decades of systemic racism in housing, employment, and law enforcement, with many families and individuals of color living on the brink of displacement due to low wages and high rent burdens. The 2023 Santa Clara County Homeless Census ²⁰shows that Black, Latino, and Asian American residents are disproportionately impacted by homelessness:

• Latino individuals make up 41% of the county’s unhoused population, despite comprising only 25% of the county’s general population. ²¹
• Black residents account for 15% of those experiencing homelessness, despite representing less than 3% of the county’s population. 
• Asian Americans, who make up 39% of Santa Clara County’s population, represent only 5% of the homeless population. However, many more Asian immigrants experience hidden homelessness, living in overcrowded conditions due to fear of legal consequences, stigma, or language barriers.²²

Enforcement Causes More Harm

When law enforcement is used to address homelessness, even when arrest is not the intention, criminalization happens for Black and Brown people. Enforcing trespassing and “quality of life” laws against people who lack shelter disproportionately impacts Black, Latino, and Asian homeless residents:

• A 2023 report by the National Homelessness Law Center found that homeless individuals of color are more likely to be stopped, searched, and arrested than their white counterparts, even for nonviolent offenses.²³
• In California, data from the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program shows that Black and Latino unhoused individuals are 50% more likely to be arrested for quality-of-life crimes like trespassing.²⁴
• Enforcement approaches create hostile situations, putting our public servants and residents at risk. Locally, we have seen Oscar Jimenez Montoya, an unhoused Latino man, experience brutality while being removed from a public street by San Jose police officers. ²⁵

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study that shows encampment sweeps, bans, and cleanups that forcibly relocate individuals lead to significant increases in deaths.²⁶

Enforcement approaches are not supported by data or evidence, do nothing to address the root causes of the housing crisis, and further harm our most vulnerable residents. Increased policing of homeless encampments disrupts resident stability and pushes unhoused individuals and families further from services. 

Proven Solutions to Homelessness

Creating a Santa Clara County where everyone has their housing needs met is critical to our collective survival and ability to thrive, and requires a range of solutions. Rather than increased policing and enforcement, all levels of government must commit to and fully fund proven solutions that effectively reduce homelessness. Data-driven, evidence-based approaches that would benefit our unhoused residents, and all residents struggling with the housing crisis: 

• Build More Affordable Housing: Increasing funding for deeply affordable housing ensures that low-income residents have stable, long-term housing options.²⁷ Streamlining permitting and zoning regulations can help accelerate the development of affordable units, reducing bottlenecks in housing production.²⁸ In addition to providing a path to permanent housing for residents exiting shelter, affordable housing serves the 248,000 households- almost 707,000 people, or nearly half of Santa Clara County’s residents- with incomes below 80% of the area median²⁹. Mandatory, state-certified Housing Elements,³⁰ 8-year housing plans completed by all cities, lay the groundwork for jurisdictions across the county to enable 130,000 new homes within the planning period. Nearly 51,000 of these homes must serve households with incomes below 80% of the area median. We know this level of production in housing and affordable housing is what we need to transform Santa Clara County into a thriving place for everyone. We must fully fund the affordable housing we need, which requires adequate, ongoing, permanent revenue sources.
• Permanent Long Term Supportive Housing (PSH): Research has consistently shown that permanent supportive housing, a specialized form of affordable housing, is highly effective at addressing chronic homelessness.³¹ In PSH, a previously unhoused individual or family with complex needs is provided long-term housing assistance as well as access to comprehensive supportive services. These services include individualized case management, life skills training, counseling, and physical or mental health treatment. PSH has been found to increase long-term housing stability and reduce returns to homelessness, including for people with significant barriers to housing. Research shows that more than 75 percent of residents remained housed after two years.³² At the community level, places that have expanded access to PSH see larger declines in chronic homelessness overall.³³
• Interim Housing with Supportive Services: Interim housing provides a short-term stable environment for people transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing. Unlike traditional shelters, successful models prioritize individual privacy, flexible lengths of stay, and essential supportive services like mental health care, care management, and housing navigation. ³⁴Programs like those operated by LifeMoves in Mountain View and HomeFirst in San Jose demonstrate that well-designed interim housing can lead to higher rates of permanent housing placements, making it a critical component of an effective homelessness response.
• Rental Assistance and Eviction Prevention: Every $1 invested in eviction prevention saves $4 in emergency response costs.³⁵ Expanding rental subsidies can prevent homelessness before it starts. Economists from U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors found that “Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) sent more funds per renting household to census tracts with higher pre-pandemic eviction filing rates, higher poverty rates, higher shares of Black renters, higher shares of renting households with children, and higher shares of renting single mothers [suggesting] that ERA was largely successful in reaching communities that were most likely to have the highest risk of eviction.”³⁶
• Tenant Protections: Strengthening tenant protections, such as just-cause eviction laws and rent stabilization policies, helps prevent displacement in vulnerable communities.³⁷ Stronger legal aid and eviction defense programs ensure that low-income renters are not unfairly removed from their homes.³⁸

By implementing strong, researched proven policies that prioritize housing-first, tenant protections, and economic mobility, jurisdictions across Santa Clara County can create a sustainable framework to effectively reduce homelessness and prevent future housing instability, but such commitment necessitates real leadership focused on addressing the structural conditions rather than criminalizing an already vulnerable population.

An Opportunity for Real Leadership 

Approaches rooted in enforcement rather than proven solutions fail to address the structural causes of homelessness. If we are serious about solving this crisis, we must prioritize housing-first policies, racial equity, and collaboration with experts and community organizations. We suggest not just surveying the difficult conditions that people are currently living in but also talking through our differences to discover our shared goal—building cities that care for our seniors, love our children, and create pathways to stability for our workforce. We welcome partnership in seeking the resources we need to be able to address our current housing crisis.

We call on all local officials to show the leadership we collectively need to address our housing crisis. Support evidence-based, data-driven solutions and champion the adequate and ongoing sources of funding for affordable housing we all need to thrive.

1. Columbia Law School (2017): Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later ↩︎
2. The National Alliance to End Homelessness with The National Low Income Housing Coalition (2023): The Case for Housing First ↩︎
3. UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (2023): Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness ↩︎
4. The Urban Institute (2024): Housing First Is Still the Best Approach to Ending Homelessness ↩︎
5. California Legislative Analyst’s Office (2025): California Housing Affordability Tracker (4th Quarter 2024) ↩︎
6. Colburn & Aldern (2022): Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns ↩︎
7. US Government Accountability Office (2020): How COVID-19 Could Aggravate the Homelessness Crisis? ↩︎
8. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (2025): The Gap ↩︎
9. UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2019): Roots, Race, & Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area ↩︎
10. Bay Area Equity Atlas: Basic family needs: The high cost of living makes it hard for many Bay Area workers to meet their families’ basic needs ↩︎
11. State of California Civil Rights Department (2022): California Pay Data Reports Show Women, Latinos, and Other Groups Overrepresented Among Low-Wage Workers ↩︎
12. Princeton Eviction Lab (2023): Who is Evicted in America ↩︎
13. UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (2023): Toward a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness ↩︎
14. California Department of Healthcare Services (2018): Statewide Aggregate Specialty Mental Health Services Performance Dashboard ↩︎
15. The Urban Institute (2020): Five Charts That Explain the Homelessness-Jail Cycle—and How to Break It ↩︎
16. Hannah Lebovits (University of Texas) & Andrew Sullivan (University of Central Florida) (2024): Do Criminalization Policies Impact Local Homelessness?  ↩︎
17. HOMELESSNESS PREVENTION SERIES: Spotlight on the Jail-to-Homelessness Pipeline ↩︎
18. Prison Policy Initiative (2018): Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people ↩︎
19. The Urban Institute (2020): Five Charts That Explain the Homelessness-Jail Cycle—and How to Break It ↩︎
20. 2023 Santa Clara County Homeless Census ↩︎
21. US Census Bureau, Santa Clara County, CA ↩︎
22. UCLA Asian American Studies Center: 2024 Asian American & Pacific Islander Policy Summit ↩︎
23. National Homelessness Law Center (2023): Racial Injustice in Homelessness and Housing in the United States ↩︎
24. Prison Policy Initiative (2025): Jailing the homeless: New data shed light on unhoused people in local jails ↩︎
25. San Jose Spotlight (March 13, 2025): San Jose police beat homeless man as mayor pushes arrests ↩︎
26. Journal of the American Medical Association (2023): Population-Level Health Effects of Involuntary Displacement of People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness ↩︎
27. Schwartz, A. F. (2015). Housing policy in the United States
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28. Glaeser, E. L., & Gyourko, J. (2018): The economic implications of housing supply ↩︎
29. Number of San Jose households by income level, HUD: Consolidated Planning/ CHAS Data. Persons per household average in Santa Clara County, U.S. Census Bureau. ↩︎
30. SV@Home: Housing Elements
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31. Aubrey, T., et al. (2020): Effectiveness of Permanent Supportive Housing and Income Assistance Interventions for Homeless Individuals in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review ↩︎
32. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018): Permanent Supportive Housing: Evaluating the Evidence for Improving Health Outcomes among People Experiencing Chronic Homelessness (p. 41) ↩︎
33. Byrne, T., et al. (2014): The Relationship Between Community Investment in Permanent Supportive Housing and Chronic Homelessness. ↩︎
34. All Home (2023): 7 Principles for Interim Housing
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35. CommonBond Communities (2021): Why Eviction Prevention Is Worth the Social Return on Investment ↩︎
36. U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (2024): Targeted Relief: Geography and Timing of Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) Funds ↩︎
37. Desmond, M., & Bell, M. (2015): Housing, poverty, and the law
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38. Sandefur, R. L. (2014): Accessing justice in the contemporary USA: Findings from the Community Needs and Services Study ↩︎