Homeless advocates protest San Jose proposal to arrest unhoused who repeatedly refuse available shelter

Despite California Gov Gavin Newsom urging cities and counties to take a more aggressive stance on encampments certain advocates continue to rail against San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan s homelessness program platform including a proposal to arrest unhoused residents who repeatedly refuse offers of available shelter Related Articles Six months after scathing audit of San Jose shelter animal advocates fume over unresolved problems Why do Bay Area homeless people turn down shelter beds Will San Jose get a new police unit to arrest homeless residents who refuse shelter San Jose proposes billion budget without key cuts to services San Jose approves stricter rules to combat abandoned shopping cart epidemic Before Newsom s announcement Monday that provided guidance for prohibiting and clearing encampments Mahan had argued that it was no longer acceptable for the unhoused to live on the streets and they needed to be held accountable for coming indoors especially when San Jose was heavily investing in shelter solutions as part of its attempts to address what numerous consider a top priority Neighborhood groups have petitioned the City Council to scrap the proposal scheduled for a vote next month arguing it would do more harm than good I reject this false choice between compassion and enforcement Sacred Heart Public Institution Executive Director Poncho Guevara mentioned I have no compassion for a system that has failed folks over and over and over again and believes that enforcement can do anything but further traumatize human beings and make it harder for them to get housing and employment in the future When we do nothing people suffer and handing out tickets is doing nothing This year San Jose has focused on expanding its shelter options through hotel and motel conversions and building new tiny home communities and safe parking and safe sleeping sites In total Mahan revealed the city is on track to open more than new placements this year more than any other city on the West Coast Mahan has preached of the need for accountability to make progress on the homelessness emergency calling on all levels of executive to do their fair share and proposing his Responsibility to Shelter program which seeks to amend the municipal code to allow the city to charge homeless residents with trespassing if they refuse shelter three times over months While acknowledging that the majority of unhoused residents accept shelter as evidenced by the low vacancy rate of its shelters Mahan commented the proposal would allow the city to petition behavioral vitality courts to act when residents suffering from mental soundness or addiction issues turn down services To enforce the proposal the city intends to reallocate million in existing materials to create a new police unit staffed with one sergeant and six police officers to reduce the negative impacts of unsheltered homelessness on the city by enforcing criminal violations The police unit will also enforce a range of quality-of-life crimes Mahan framed the proposal as a middle ground between the housing first strategy and banning encampments altogether like other local cities have done without offering shelter after the Supreme Court s Grants Pass v Johnson decision I think it s a pretty balanced approach particularly in light of cities we re seeing outright ban camping without offers of shelter or the governor s announcement this morning which I think is largely aligned with where we re going and is pretty aggressive on effectively banning encampments Mahan reported I think in San Jose we re trying to take a very pragmatic practical holistic compassionate middle ground of dramatically scaling up safe places where people can be with sanitation measure three meals a day circumstance management shelter and services Despite Mahan s goal of getting residents indoors homeless advocates announced the framework amounts to criminalizing homelessness Erin Stanton director of homelessness prevention at Sacred Heart stated research shows that approach does not work and that if the city was intent on compassionate and effective solutions it would focus on housing and services When people are ticketed or arrested they move to a new spot down the road Stanton explained They return to the streets after the time in jail they lose critical property like IDs and medication and they lose trust in the services and the system Criminalizing homelessness makes it harder to end homelessness Mahan emphatically denied that his proposal amounted to criminalizing homelessness noting how nonviolent misdemeanors do not tend to end up in incarceration but rather diversion programs He stressed that the approach would only apply when the city has available shelter Mahan also pointed to two incidents last week one in which a person with a history of mental healthcare issues stabbed a police officer and another in which a homeless man who in the last few days assaulted a -year-old boy was published into the society as being avoidable if the city held them accountable for getting remedy If we intervene earlier and get people into shelter or remedy and hold people accountable for engaging with rehabilitation when they re unwilling to accept shelter I think we can break this cycle that we see play out over and over and over again Mahan disclosed While a large contingent of residents supports Mahan s guidelines direction certain members of the City Council are pushing back When we are talking about the issues that people who are venture resistant are facing whether it s mental strength substance abuse or alcohol abuse the place to break the cycle isn t well into adulthood District City Councilmember Pamela Campos explained It s early prevention in the form of stable housing good jobs and strong social safety nets so if we as a city are truly driven to investments that improve the quality of life in our society it s our duty to scrutinize policies like the Responsibility to Shelter ordinance that are not rooted in the policies that are proven to end homelessness District City Councilmember David Cohen noted that the city has not yet satisfied the demands of people in the neighborhood who want them and expressed skepticism that the new guidelines would have any impact in his district where multiple people are frustrated that we have ordinances on the books that we still don t even enforce While Mahan acknowledged that San Jose requirements to build more shelter options he declared two things could be true simultaneously including that the city should not be turning a blind eye to those refusing shelter who may need intervention I don t think we should wait sequentially before we have all the affordable housing build shelter do specific intervention and get more restoration beds Mahan disclosed We re going to have to map all of it at once but be measured in how we do it