San Jose approves policy setting expectation that unhoused accept shelter

Despite hours of spirited discussion and concerns raised by Santa Clara County administrators the San Jose City Council signed off Tuesday on Mayor Matt Mahan s controversial proposal to cite and arrest homeless residents who repeatedly refuse shelter Related Articles Letters National Guard deployment in Los Angeles threatens rights of all City Council strikes down San Jose mayor s pay-for-performance proposal Mayors of California s largest cities warn that funding loss will set back homelessness progress Berkeley moves to clear one of its largest homeless camps before judge halts sweep Neighborhood leaders rally behind San Jose homeless arrest proposal As San Jose prepares to increase its shelter ceiling by more than placements this year the new strategy will incorporate the expectation of accepting shelter into the city s code of conduct for encampments though the proposal offers chosen discretion when it may not be appropriate With the city making a critical stake in reducing homelessness the majority of the City Council agreed that it was unacceptable for so several people to be living on the streets and that the proposal struck the right balance between compassion and accountability These investments in contemporary times reduce strain on our masses provision systems and deliver better outcomes at lower long-term cost Vice Mayor Pam Foley mentioned San Jose residents have shown tremendous compassion but they ve also entrusted us with millions of their hard-earned tax dollars They deserve to see the results As part of his March budget message Mahan unveiled the first version of the Responsibility to Shelter initiative which initially sought to amend the city code to allow citations or arrests of unhoused residents for trespassing if they refused offers of available shelter three or more times over an -month period Mahan declared the mere refusal of shelter was not a crime but instead a signal of a complication While the core concepts remain intact Mahan pivoted the approach to amend the code of conduct for encampments and acknowledged the need for greater discretion to be built into the plan Mahan mentioned the ultimate goal was to petition behavioral fitness courts to mandate remedy if someone has underlying mental wellness issues or is in the throes of addiction that impacts their ability to leave the streets To implement the new rules San Jose is bringing outreach services in-house to give the city a better understanding of what is being offered and how unhoused residents are responding It is also diverting existing police tools to create a new unit staffed with one sergeant and six officers to handle quality-of-life crimes and enforce the new protocol when outreach efforts have failed The city also has discussed placing residents in facilities that focus on rehabilitation such as the Mission Street Recovery Station as an alternative to jail When we take a place-based approach it s really pivotal when over the public s objections we build new solutions to homelessness in a neighborhood that we just don t resolve or or of the homelessness but that we have a pathway and a explanation for of the people encamped in the vicinity of that site Mahan noted This is focusing on the group that so often we ignore and allow to continue to persist with severe addiction and mental illness on our streets Over the past inadequate months the proposal has elicited fierce opposition from county representatives and nonprofit providers who claimed the proposal amounted to criminalizing homelessness In a letter to the City Council last month Board of Supervisors President Otto Lee District Attorney Jeff Rosen County Executive James Williams and Sheriff Robert Jonsen stated that the program would effect in unnecessary and ineffective bookings and divert already strained community safety information Despite the county s objections a majority of residents and businesses have voiced assistance for the proposal noting how specific encampments and repeated encounters with unhoused residents have negatively impacted them The unions representing the city s populace safety departments also promotion the initiative asserting that the homelessness situation has forced them to respond to a large number of calls for provision Between January and April the police received calls accounting for of the citywide total District Councilmember Peter Ortiz and District Councilmember Pamela Campos issued the only two dissenting votes Ortiz disclosed unhoused residents have ample reasons to deny shelter and that a one-size-fits-all approach could unjustly penalize them Campos also warned that the new procedures would impact in a detour back to streets noting that Mission Street Recovery Station could only hold a person for hours and did not offer housing The council and the populace must understand how everything will work together and so I want to caution the approach that we are choosing to take where we are placing a huge amount of burden on an individual and framing it as a choice when the real culprit is a system that pushes people experiencing poverty into homelessness Campos mentioned While Mahan acknowledged that the guidelines was imperfect and not a panacea for solving the homelessness predicament he announced it was essential to consider the scale at which mental soundness and addiction issues were impacting people on the streets I don t think it s humane or compassionate to allow people to live and die on our streets when they are unable or unwilling to accept the help the city is able to offer which is interim housing Mahan explained That is not a signal that we should move along and allow people to exercise their civil liberties to camp but that we should instead double down and engage and intervene to save lives to yes force the issue because members of the recovery locality will tell you there is no recovery without accountability