After encampment clearing at San Jose’s Coyote Creek, only some find shelter

For the first time in 11 years, Angelica Lopez has a safe place to sleep when night falls.

Last month, she moved into a room inside a newly opened homeless shelter near downtown San Jose. With her own bed, three meals a day and a case manager helping her find a job and an apartment, Lopez said she’s finally begun to “wake up from the nightmare” of homelessness.

Just a few weeks ago, none of this seemed possible. Officials had ordered Lopez and hundreds of other homeless people to leave a roughly 4-mile section of Coyote Creek, a grassy floodplain running through central San Jose where many of them had lived for years. At the time, Lopez, 39, told this news organization she feared that she could find herself in harm’s way if forced onto the street.

But as clean-up crews began clearing out the area on May 15 to make way for a long-planned, federally mandated flood-protection project, outreach workers promised Lopez space at the shelter, which resembles a small freight container, near the Guadalupe River. She moved in the next day, and her boyfriend, Roberto Ortiz, 35, followed a few days later.

“Each of us has our room keys,” Lopez said. “That’s the biggest thing — we have our privacy.”

For most of the homeless people who were displaced from Coyote Creek, however, it’s a different story.

Outreach teams have sheltered or housed only around 30 of those who had been camping in the warren of tents, vehicles and makeshift structures tucked along the shaded waterway, the city said. But officials can’t account for many of the 200 others who have since emptied out onto city streets or other parts of the creek.

Mayor Matt Mahan said the creek clearing could be a preview of what’s to come as more flood projects are necessary due to climate change. But he was quick to note the city’s response was nothing new, even as he seeks to change the dynamic.

“We just abate encampments, meaning we send them a few blocks away and then when people get angry, we abate and move them a few blocks back,” he said. “This is what I’ve seen us do for years, which is part of my motivation for running for mayor.”

To bring more people like Lopez and Ortiz indoors, Mahan is pushing to set aside $50 million to help add 1,000 more “quick-build apartments” similar to those at the Guadalupe River site.

Mahan is touting the proposal as a fast and cost-effective solution to sheltering a portion of the estimated 4,400 homeless people living in tents, encampments and vehicles throughout the city. But it’s been met with resistance from advocates who say the money would be better spent on building more affordable housing — without which, they argue, many shelter residents have little hope of eventually moving to permanent homes.

In April, the Santa Clara Valley Water District finalized an agreement with the City Council giving San Jose $4.8 million to remove people from the creek and connect them with shelter and services so the district can start the necessary construction on flood walls and other improvements in mid-June. The district began planning the project after a devastating flood in 2017 forced 14,000 people to flee homes in the area and caused an estimated $100 million in damage.

For more than a month before the camps were cleared, outreach workers from nonprofits HomeFirst and PATH made daily visits to the area. In the agreement with the city, HomeFirst received $3.6 million to provide wrap-around services and temporary shelter. But city officials made no guarantees that everyone at Coyote Creek could move indoors.

Victor Ibarra, 48, is holding out hope he’ll land a spot at the Guadalupe site. When he was forced to pack up camp under a bridge near the San Jose Municipal Golf Course, he moved his tent to the other side of Coyote Creek. For now, nobody has told him to leave. But he’s stuck waiting to hear back from outreach workers, even as he’s watched others from the encampment get placed at the shelter.

“It’s hella frustrating,” Ibarra said. “Real frustrating.”

In recent years, San Jose, like other cities across the Bay Area, has turned to prefabricated apartments and tiny homes as an alternative to dorm-style group shelters. The aim is to offer homeless residents more privacy and stability so they’re more likely to accept shelter and take advantage of services, including mental health care, addiction counseling and help in finding permanent housing.

Still, many unhoused residents are reluctant to accept spots at the shelter sites. Some worry they won’t be able to bring pets or their possessions or don’t like the idea of living in a small space. Previously, Ibarra had a room at an interim shelter in the southern part of the city, but moved out because he was far away from friends at encampments.

Last year, about half of the 912 residents at such “interim” shelters in the city moved into permanent homes, though results varied across the seven sites, according to city reports. Some of the shelters had a maximum stay of six months, while others allowed residents to stay a year or more.

Shaunn Cartwright, an advocate for homeless people in San Jose, said it’s not uncommon for people to have “one foot in a tiny home and one foot back in a camp,” adding that the only way to fix what the mayor and others “call a homelessness problem is to fix the housing problem.”

Lopez, however, has no desire to ever return to living outdoors.

With the newfound stability in her life at the Guadalupe shelter, she plans to find a clerical office job and an apartment in San Jose, which she hopes would allow her to see her eight children and two grandchildren.

“It’s a really nice push,” Lopez said. “Most of us, that’s what we need, a good push.”

Staff reporter Gabriel Greschler contributed to this report.