San Jose has just as many homeless people as it did two years ago, despite sheltering many of them

Two years into an aggressive push to address homelessness San Jose has managed to bring more people indoors but the total number of unhoused residents remains stubbornly unchanged Related Articles In a nation growing hostile toward drugs and homelessness Los Angeles tries leniency homeless shelter beds are likely headed to Oakland Just not in Chinatown Fresh off testing presidential waters Newsom announces new housing and homelessness agency Bay Area cities are toughening up on homelessness Under Mayor Barbara Lee will Oakland follow suit Contra Costa County reports drop in homelessness A new point-in-time census circulated Monday discovered that the city s homeless population was largely the same as s count of That s despite the city s efforts to increase its crisis shelter quota and hundreds of millions of dollars in residents spending The count conducted in January as required by the federal cabinet offers a snapshot of homelessness on a single night It s used to help determine federal funding and track trends in encampments shelter usage and car dwellers San Jose fared slightly better than Santa Clara County overall where homelessness rose from the count to a record high in the latest tally going from to people That comes even as local agencies have moved more than people into permanent housing in up-to-date years On the other side of the Bay Area Contra Costa County released an estimated decline in its homeless population from though six in homeless people there still lack a shelter bed Since taking office last year Mayor Matt Mahan has spearheaded a dual approach clearing encampments particularly RV clusters while ramping up investments in urgency shelters and temporary housing The city this year allocated more than million toward homelessness initiatives including interim housing outreach and encampment abatements That effort has paid off in at least one way more people are now off the streets The number of homeless residents in shelters rose by since while the unsheltered population declined by Since the number of sheltered homeless individuals has increased from to Our focus is ending the encampments and getting everybody indoors Mahan reported in an interview To make room in the budget for new urgency housing city leaders in current years redirected funds from a real estate transfer tax originally intended for permanent housing Critics though warn that without long-term housing investments the revolving door of homelessness will continue San Jose has also taken strategies to allow criminal penalties against several homeless people Earlier this year the City Council approved a change to city code that Mahan pushed for which allows police to cite and arrest homeless people who refuse shelter The framework has also been met with fierce criticism from homeless advocates Our locality has nowhere near enough safe options for people who are just trying to survive Jennifer Loving CEO of Destination Home previously reported the Bay Area News Group Responding to homelessness with criminalized enforcement doesn t solve this emergency and will never product in less people on the streets Related Articles In a nation growing hostile toward drugs and homelessness Los Angeles tries leniency homeless shelter beds are likely headed to Oakland Just not in Chinatown Fresh off testing presidential waters Newsom announces new housing and homelessness agency Bay Area cities are toughening up on homelessness Under Mayor Barbara Lee will Oakland follow suit Contra Costa County reports drop in homelessness Destination Home has also spoken out against the use of affordable housing funds for crisis interim housing Still Mahan and his administration have argued that temporary shelter offers immediate relief and that a visible reduction in street homelessness is a necessary first step This details proves that the set of policies we have advanced in San Jose in contemporary years are moving us in the right direction Mahan declared But we can t do it alone if the rest of our county and leaders in Sacramento don t recognize that they need to shift their focus to getting people indoors we will not be able to solve this problem The state s homelessness emergency could be a liability to Gov Gavin Newsom especially as he considers a likely bid for the presidency On Friday just after returning from a trip to South Carolina where he spoke with voters Newsom declared the creation of a new California Housing and Homelessness Agency which would focus on lowering housing costs and getting people off the streets