San Jose to clear 1,000 homeless people from creeks and waterways

For decades, homeless people have camped along San Jose’s 140 miles of creeks and rivers. Now, at the direction of state regulators, city officials are devising an ambitious plan to move about a thousand people into shelter by the middle of next year.

On Friday, before a line of tents near Coyote Creek, Mayor Matt Mahan announced the plan in response to a state mandate to clear encampments polluting the city’s watersheds.

“What they’re telling us, which is what I’ve been saying all along, is that the status quo is unacceptable,” Mahan said.

To ensure homeless people have a place to go, the mayor and a handful of City Council members pledged to continue adding shelter space across the city, including a newly proposed group shelter with about 1,000 beds south of downtown.

Officials said the clean-up and shelter effort — which could start in earnest in about six months and must be completed by June 2025 — will cost tens of millions of dollars at a time when the city’s budget is already stretched thin.

But they maintain that the hefty price tag is worth it, not just to meet environmental requirements but to ease the human suffering on the street and ensure that neighbors feel safe visiting city parks and trails.

“We must treat this like the emergency that it is,” Mahan said. “This is going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging, and it’s going to be expensive.”

Pedro Reyes, who lives along the grassy floodplain near Coyote Creek and Tully Road, said he’d be open to accepting a bed at a new shelter. But Reyes, 39, added he’s also comfortable staying outside, despite tending to recent stab wounds after he said he was attacked at his encampment.

Besides, he said he doesn’t think he needs help. And even if he did, he finds it hard to trust people offering support.

“I can’t believe it when people are talking to me, like, sweet,” he said. “I don’t trust anyone.”

On Tuesday, the City Council is set to vote to direct officials to devise plan details, including which areas along waterways across the city need to be prioritized for clean-up and where no-camping zones could be established to prevent homeless people from returning. The city has an estimated 6,340 homeless residents, about 70% of whom are unsheltered.

The agency forcing the city into action is the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which has recently ramped up pressure on cities across the region to move encampments out of sensitive waterways that often empty into the ocean. It’s threatening San Jose with litigation and tens of thousands of dollars in daily fines if it fails to comply.

The city has long struggled with what to do about encampments along its creeks and rivers, dating back at least 10 years when it took multiple attempts to clear hundreds of people from a massive Coyote Creek encampment known as “The Jungle.”

More recently, the city cleared around 200 people from parts of Coyote Creek to make way for a flood protection project. In February, it set in motion plans to create a no-encampment zone along the downtown stretch of the Guadalupe River after clearing dozens of tents and RVs from the area.

Homeless advocates say clearing camps can be traumatizing for unsheltered people, who can be torn from encampment communities and forced to part with their possessions. Without providing a roof over their heads, advocates say, encampment sweeps do little but push homeless people into new neighborhoods.

“If you’re going to abate, you have to have a place for them to go,” said Todd Langton, founder of the Coalition for the Unhoused of Silicon Valley. “It’s common sense. It’s humanity.”

Under a 2018 federal court ruling, local governments across the Western U.S. are expected to at least offer shelter before clearing encampments. However, after frustrated officials petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to modify or do away with the mandate, the justices agreed to review the rule later this year.

Mahan, who’s expected to sail to reelection next week, has made adding tiny homes, safe overnight parking spots and other “interim” shelter options with supportive services a centerpiece of his push to end street homelessness.

Critics of that position argue that shelter, while needed, is but a temporary solution that won’t help many people out of homelessness without significantly more investment in permanent affordable and supportive housing. A city report from last year found that about half of the roughly 900 people who stayed in interim shelters in 2022 moved on to permanent housing.

Mahan and his allies on the council respond that faster and more cost-effective solutions are needed because building low-income homes can take years and cost as much as $1 million for a single unit.

“For far too long we have enabled unsafe, inhumane, and dangerous living conditions for the unsheltered by relying on woefully slow and brutally expensive projects,” Councilman Bien Doan said in a statement.

Doan on Friday announced the proposed 1,000-bed group shelter for his district, south of Highway 280 between Highways 101 and 87. Doan’s office declined to give potential locations and did not immediately respond to a question about how much it could cost.

Opening new shelters may cost less than new affordable housing, but keeping them up and running could be expensive in the long run. Earlier this year, the city estimated that if it follows through on plans to add hundreds more shelter units, total operational expenses could soon exceed $70 million annually, about twice the current cost.

Staff writer Kate Talerico contributed to this report.