Image: San Jose Mayor Matt Mayan during a press conference taken by Beth LaBerge, KQED
San Jose’s Mayor Matt Mahan was interviewed by KQED on March 6th, for an article titled San José Mayor Pushes to Arrest Unhoused Who Refuse Shelter. In the article, Mahan is quoted as saying, “unhoused people who refuse multiple offers of shelter should face arrest.” Like many members of San Jose’s community, we find Mahan’s statement inhumane and misleading.
The City and County combined do not have adequate shelter capacity to serve San Jose’s unsheltered, unhoused population. There are many reasons someone may decline to move into a shelter, including rules that might prevent them from going to work, or requiring family separation. However, it is irrelevant that some people are declining to move into shelter, because the City and County have only 1,871 shelter units in San Jose (including those still under construction) for San Jose’s 5,477 residents living unsheltered (see image of City staff’s slide below). Moreover, there are already about 1,400 people on the County’s waiting list for shelter, the majority of whom live in San Jose. Shelter space for families often takes months to become available.
Establishing laws that punish people for living without shelter while knowing that our housing and shelter system is woefully inadequate is cruel and inhumane. To serve its current unsheltered population with interim shelter alone, the City would need triple its current shelter capacity. And although criminalization of homelessness has been enabled by a 2023 Supreme Court decision which every liberal Justice opposed, we share the opinion of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson that this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Not only does this approach fail to resolve homelessness in any way, it triggers existing barriers for unhoused residents to find jobs or housing in the future. San José City Councilmember Pamela Campos, whose district is home to the Branham and Monterey shelter site, thoughtfully shared her concern that the policy would make “a challenging problem more challenging: “With a criminal record, if this policy does pass, that’s only going to make it more difficult to find the jobs and the housing that are going to support self-sustainability,” Campos said.
State Assemblymember Alex Lee, who represents Fremont and parts of San José, went further, calling Mahan’s initiative immoral and ineffective, adding that he would explore writing state legislation to “curb the criminalization of homelessness” on the city level.
Our policies need to be informed by what is real: there are thousands more people than shelter spaces in San Jose and throughout Santa Clara County. Further, San Jose has more than 140,000 households with low incomes – folks who are often one unexpected expense away from homelessness. A successful approach to our homelessness crisis requires a systemic approach: homelessness prevention, a cost-effective and often one-time investment to help people struggling with an emergency or unexpected expense to stay housed; permanent affordable housing to ensure community members living on fixed or very low incomes have a safe and dignified place to live; and interim shelter with services to shelter and support people living outdoors, in their cars, or in other unhealthy living conditions.
Image: All Home Regional Action Plan 2024
At SV@Home, we believe that human rights and dignity matter. Our response to homelessness must come from a place of care: for people, our neighbors, our community, and this city. Arrest is a costly, ineffective, and inhumane response to people who cannot afford the high cost of housing in the Bay Area. San Jose is known for innovation – when we are faced with a challenge, we don’t shrug our shoulders and walk away, turning our backs on our own, we find solutions. Without implementing real solutions, including homelessness prevention, interim shelter, and permanent affordable housing, we will continue to face declining population, school closures, and increasing rates of displacement and homelessness – losing our families and risking the vibrancy we are working so hard to build. This is not the true spirit of San Jose – we know better, and San Jose’s City leadership should firmly reject this proposal to criminalize homelessness.