Setting the Record Straight: San José’s Approach to Homelessness and Accountability
I would expect a research organization of SV@Home’s caliber to take a more thorough approach in scrutinizing media coverage and analyzing policy proposals before publishing a commentary. Both the headline and the article are misleading and serve to further inflame already difficult conversations about how we end the humanitarian crisis on our streets. Despite the organization’s research capabilities, staff did not reach out to my office for any additional context or background information and failed in this article to actually address the complex set of issues and resource constraints we’re grappling with in local government as we work to end unsheltered homelessness.
First, the headline would have you believe that I am proposing we punish people for being homeless when there isn’t enough shelter. My proposal is in fact the opposite: I’m proposing enforcing our trespassing laws WHEN we are repeatedly offering shelter (typically housing, which I’ll explain below) and someone is repeatedly refusing. We are opening over 1,000 new shelter placements this year and have over 40 outreach workers in the field making contact with homeless individuals and preparing them for the opportunity to come indoors for months before a new site opens.
Second, the post starts by claiming that I was quoted by KQED as saying that we simply should arrest people for refusing shelter and then links to a KQED article where I am not quoted anywhere saying that line. That error alone calls into question the entire post.
What I am saying is that when we have built brand new interim housing at great expense to taxpayers — and in approving that site at City Council we commit to the neighborhood that this solution will end homelessness in their neighborhood — we need to hold people in the vicinity accountable for coming indoors. When we don’t have shelter, we obviously are not offering it, and therefore, would not enforce trespassing charges for refusing the shelter we don’t have.
The SV@Home post essentially — without forthrightly stating this position — makes the case that individuals should have the right to camp on public streets indefinitely whether or not they are being offered shelter. I suspect the authors did not directly state this implied position because it is deeply unpopular and deeply unfair to the broader community that is funding shelter and services.
It is worth noting that cities around the country including at least one large city (Fremont) right here in the Bay Area are outright banning camping even without offering shelter. In that context, we in San Jose are trying to do the right thing for everyone in our community by more than doubling our shelter capacity and requiring that it is used when available — that is the kind of balanced approach that will enable us to maintain public trust as we use large sums of tax dollars to create safe, dignified places for everyone to be, often in the midst of existing neighborhoods that are inclined to strongly oppose such solutions.
To the issue of compulsion, which the SV@Home article focuses on, the majority of people on our streets will gladly accept new housing, but we are consistently encountering a subset of people who are unwilling or unable to accept help. These are typically individuals who have been forced to live in chronic homelessness due to lack of basic shelter and are exhibiting serious underlying behavioral health challenges, such as addiction to fentanyl and meth, which are estimated to be up to 50 times more addictive than cocaine and heroin were in the 1980s. In no way do I judge people who are suffering from addiction or other forms of mental illness, but I do believe we have a collective responsibility to bring them indoors and give them a chance to detox, medicate, reconnect with loved ones, or otherwise accept the help they need to achieve greater health and independence and have less impact on the broader community. Otherwise, we are leaving our most vulnerable to continue deteriorating on our streets with no plan in place to help them.
Here’s the hard part — because state law (i.e. LPS, or the Lanterman Petris Short Act, in particular) strictly limits our ability to intervene in cycles of addiction and mental illness from a health perspective in CA, at the city-level we are left with law enforcement as the primary tool for compelling people indoors when they repeatedly refuse to do so. Specifically, our first responders are not allowed to physically compel someone into emergency psychiatric care unless it is truly an emergency (in the absence of violence, the bar for a 5150 hold is essentially that the person verbalizes that they want to kill themselves or someone else), but by pressing charges for quality of life crimes that the person is in fact committing, such as trespassing, we can divert them into a behavioral health court.
Once in behavioral health court, a trained judge informed by health care professionals can determine if mandated treatment is warranted. In our County, the truth — and our County Sheriff just confirmed this publicly — is that people do not spend time in jail for a non-violent quality of life crime like trespassing. Our best case scenario is diversion to mental health or drug court and the worst case scenario is that the person is simply released back onto the street where we can only hope that this brief interaction with law enforcement might increase their willingness to seek a change in their lives by accepting shelter.
But what about the quality of the shelter? Is it legitimate for individuals to reject shelter? On the first point, we have gone to great lengths to listen to homeless people about barriers to accepting shelter. Our shelters are typically interim housing communities that look like market-rate housing or new college dorms inside. We have over 600 of these units and are building hundreds more this year alone (and converting multiple motels into the same type of interim housing). These sites offer people private rooms with private en-suite bathrooms (the most recent site includes kitchenettes) and we allow people to bring their partner, their pets, and their belongings with them. We do not require that someone be sober to enter the site, though we do not allow drug use on site. We do not kick people out on a predetermined timeline. Some individuals have spent a couple of years while others spend a couple months in our transitional housing sites before making the jump to something more permanent.
On the second question, people certainly have freedom of movement rights and should have the right to reject a particular apartment or shelter placement, but by the same token, cities have a right to enforce basic expectations for everyone who chooses to reside within their boundaries. Our position in San Jose is that we will invest in providing basic, dignified, and personalized shelter and services for those on our streets and, when it is available, we will require that — at a minimum — people come indoors so we can stop the continuous fires, trash, and other impacts of long-term encampments that harm our collective safety and quality of life. If someone doesn’t agree with these expectations, they are free to find another city that refuses to intervene and help people when their behavior is harming their own health and the safety of the community. Because in San Jose, our community is unwilling to allow indefinite public camping when housing is available.
I urge SV@Home to take the time to grapple with these issues in a more substantive way, perhaps come out with me to our encampments or spend more time with our first responders who are on the front lines of the crisis (both our firefighter and police officer unions who are in encampments on a daily basis strongly support my proposal), and put a stop to the fear-mongering and overwrought political rhetoric. In San Jose, homelessness cannot be a choice when housing or dignified shelter is available.
