‘Where will we go?’: Uncertainty, distrust shroud clearing of homeless encampment at San Jose’s Columbus Park

Amid the throng of RVs lined up around San Jose’s Columbus Park, brown paper signs draped on vehicles along Asbury Street read “Where do we go” and “Where will we go?”

The questions are popular refrains among the hundreds of unhoused residents who will continue to call the park home for the next few weeks before the city of San Jose moves forward with clearing the massive encampment just south of the airport on Aug. 18 as part of its plans to revitalize it in early 2026, after years of deterioration.

For many residents at the park, the looming sweep comes with dread, frustration and feelings of resentment over broken promises. They fear being forgotten as they remember the city’s last attempt to clear the park.

“The last time they had the sweep was two years ago and they just watched the RV vehicles get crushed,” said 58-year-old Katherine Davis, who has lived in Columbus Park for the past six years and is considered by many there to be its unofficial mayor. “We need a solution and we need help with everything we are going through right now. We need housing.”

In April, public officials announced plans to fill a large section of the park with soccer fields, horseshoe pits and pickleball, futsal and basketball courts, restoring it to its intended purpose as a source of recreation.

At the time, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan also noted the public safety impacts from the encampment, which had generated 400 priority-one 911 calls over three years, including 30 in the first quarter of 2025.

Those health and public safety concerns only grew worse in the following weeks when the park saw numerous fires, including a 20-acre blaze that came within about 20 yards of the encampment.

Between July 1, 2024, and June 1, 2025, the zone encompassing Columbus Park, just north of Taylor Street, saw 44 non-medical calls for incidents like vegetation, trash and vehicle fires, hazardous materials responses and smoke investigations, according to Jake Pisani, a public information manager at the San Jose Fire Department. Over the same period, Pisani said the area south of Taylor Street saw 145 of those types of calls.

In its last attempt to clear the encampment, San Jose failed to secure the site, leading to unhoused residents and RVs overrunning the fields and basketball courts once again.

Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services spokesperson Amanda Rodriguez said this time, the city will create a no-encampment zone at the park after the abatement is complete — estimated to be around the end of October — and install concrete k-rail and fencing to allow the pre-construction activities to begin and keep the public safe.

Questions remain, however, about what will happen to the people living there.

Rodriguez said that as of July 1, approximately 265 people — an estimate Davis and homeless advocates scoffed at, calling it an undercount — were living at Columbus Park.

Rodriguez said the city is prioritizing beds at the new Taylor Street Navigation Hub, which will open 56 tents this month, along with units in converted motels and other shelter sites for individuals and families.

“For months, city-contracted outreach teams have been visiting Columbus Park to build trust, connect people to services, and enroll individuals and families in the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS),” Rodriguez said.

But many residents living at the park and homeless advocates doubt the the city’s plan will work because of prior poor experiences.

Danielle, 38, said she was forced to leave interim housing and had her service animals taken from her despite being legally blind. Tearing up, Jackson said it sowed such a deep level of distrust that she would not accept an offer of housing even if offered.

“I can’t trust none of these organizations that are supposed to be out here to help me, because they’re not helping me, so I might as well just stay out here and just continue to help myself like this, because it hurts,” Jackson said.

Robert Gilman, a 38-year-old who has lived at Columbus Park for the past year and a half, also noted a disconnect between the outreach offered and the needs expressed by unhoused residents.

Like the many members of the LGBTQ community who are currently at the park, he said he is concerned about finding a place away from the threats and harassment he has previously been forced to endure.

“There’s no safe space for LGBTQ members, and there needs to be safer places where we can be, where we know our neighbors and know our community,” Gilman said. “Those of us who are part of the LGBTQ community out here know each other, and we support each other and we find little ways to help each other, but we need more support from the organizations that are actually supposed to be there for us. We see very little outreach and it’s sad.”

San Jose has touted the potential to add up to 1,400 placements in its shelter system through hotel and motel conversions, safe parking and safe sleeping sites and tiny home communities. But homeless advocate Shaunn Cartwright argues that the city should delay its sweeps until more of those units come online, noting that dispersing the unhoused will make it more challenging to connect them with services in the future.

“This makes no sense, and doing it intentionally when sites aren’t open, you are intentionally being cruel and could make the situation worse,” Cartwright said.

Cartwright envisions a situation similar to when San Jose began abating RVs on public streets in January and created more mini-encampments in neighborhoods — which residents likened to a whack-a-mole game.

In anticipation of that occurring, Rodriguez said the city was exploring a voluntary RV buyback program to reduce the number of vehicles that may relocate into surrounding areas and would monitor areas where people relocated in the past and proactively prevent new congregations of RVs from forming in the surrounding neighborhoods.

While many residents at Columbus Park do not feel supported by the city, a coalition of homeless advocacy organizations has helped them form their own community group, Guadalupe Residents Advocating for Community Engagement (GRACE), to secure better conditions and protect their rights when the sweep eventually comes this month.

“The city of San Francisco settled a lawsuit for $2.8 million over rights violations of unhoused individuals who are in an encampment that got cleared … and we’re anticipating that similar things could happen here,” said John Froggatt, an attorney with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley.