The Full Picture
When it comes to my proposal that we use a brief, targeted interaction with the criminal justice system to compel those who repeatedly refuse private shelter to instead engage with treatment, we’ve been talking a lot lately about the moment of accountability. The moment where things get so bad that we need to take action to help those suffering and the broader community. But we don’t talk a lot about the many moments that come before and the many moments that will come after because of our action at this critical juncture.
So let’s start from the beginning.
We’re rethinking our outreach model. We’re bringing some outreach teams in-house to explore how we can better monitor and track the individuals who need our help most. Then, we’re going to get them that help — in part by opening over 1,000 safe, dignified and private interim housing placements over the next year.
Our outreach workers will focus first on the areas surrounding any soon-to-open interim housing sites, creating relationships with the people living outdoors. They’ll ask them if they have a family member they can help them find. They’ll tell them about a warming or cooling center nearby. They’ll connect them to job training programs and counseling resources. They’ll get to know them.
And as it becomes available, they’ll offer a private room with a door that locks in a community with referrals to supportive services like mental health counseling and addiction treatment. This site will offer three meals a day, a dog run and no curfew. It’ll be within walking distance of where they are currently camped. And if they’ve created a community within the encampments, the entire community in many cases will have the opportunity to come indoors together.
10–30% of the people given this choice will not accept. Those who choose to stay outdoors often have serious mental health or addiction challenges to the point that they cannot make a rational decision about their own well-being.
It would be at this point that the status quo approach would give up on them. Leave them on the streets to die. And that’s the reality for 200 people in our county each year, nearly half of whom die of overdose or suicide. 5,000 in California every year. 50,000 over the last decade in our state.
We need to do things differently. We need to do better. We need to get people the help they deserve and the care that they need.
That’s what Responsibility to Shelter is all about. But maybe we should have called it Responsibility to Care. Because not everybody needs a shelter bed. Some people need a treatment bed. Others need to be reconnected with family. All need care from another human being.
This is how I am proposing we get them that care. Our outreach workers will spend weeks serving encampments in advance of a new interim housing site opening. After that site opens, the 10–30% who choose to remain living outdoors will be abated from the area. In doing this, we will fulfill a promise to the entire neighborhood. A promise that the communities that welcome solutions to homelessness into their neighborhood, will see the effects of it. We will essentially end homelessness in San Jose neighborhood by neighborhood.
Our outreach workers will log their interactions and monitor the people who choose to remain homeless. If needed, they’ll call in our new Neighborhood Quality of Life unit within PD. This team will be responsible for enforcing our Code of Conduct, which includes restrictions on behaviors like lighting dangerous fires, tapping into street lights, building permanent structures along our waterways, cutting down trees and other bad choices that impact the broader community. Our Code of Conduct also establishes the principle that when safe, dignified housing is offered, people living on our streets have a responsibility to come indoors or find another city that’s okay with camping in public space being a personal choice.
If someone repeatedly violates the Code of Conduct, our proposal to the County is that our Quality of Life Officers will first take them to a recovery center to access supportive services. They’ll have the opportunity to detox and spend a night indoors. We hope that this brief interaction with our officers and in a recovery center will interrupt cycles of hopelessness that become reality on the streets.
If they choose to simply leave the recovery center without accessing services or even attempting to turn their lives around, it’ll be up to our City Attorney’s Office to petition the courts to get them care. And they’ll have a good case built by the many moments of intervention by our outreach workers and quality of life officers. It’ll then be up to the rest of the justice system to fulfill its duty. It’ll be up to our judges who preside over our robust behavioral health and drug courts to make a better choice for the people suffering on our streets. It’ll be up to our county to build out the treatment beds we need so there is an appropriate placement for each person who needs it.
This new system of care will save lives. This moment of accountability will create many moments of freedom. Freedom from addiction, freedom from the streets, freedom from suffering.
Because clearly, what we’re doing now isn’t enough. It’s killing our most vulnerable neighbors who we have a responsibility to care for. Let’s fulfill that responsibility.
