More details are emerging about San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s plan to arrest or hospitalize homeless people for refusing offers of shelter — and the city could create a police unit to do so.
Mahan presented more details about his “Responsibility to Shelter” initiative Thursday, including expanding the city’s in-house homeless outreach efforts and establishing a new police unit to enforce it. Under the proposed policy, homeless people who decline offers of shelter three times within an 18-month period will be cited and arrested for trespassing. The policy is slated for discussion Monday, as part of the City Council’s budget hearings.
Mahan said arrests would be considered nonviolent misdemeanors, and he hopes to work with Santa Clara County to direct people cited under the policy directly to a rehabilitation center — without a judge’s approval and without sending people to jail. A county partnership over this proposal hasn’t been finalized, with county officials being at odds with Mahan’s plan.
“The goal has always been to get people the help they need,” Mahan said. “We’re making a historic investment trying to get people indoors and connected to services. If that’s repeatedly refused, we’re very happy to get them over to the Mission Street Recovery Center to get them the help they need.”
The city plans to add 1,400 shelter beds over the next year. Several housing sites are set to come online this year, including tiny homes on Cherry Avenue, Via Del Oro and an expanded Rue Ferrari. A safe sleeping site near Watson Park is also set to open soon. There are roughly 6,340 homeless residents in San Jose as of 2023, with about 5,550 being unsheltered.
Mahan said the city plans to create a “Neighborhood Quality of Life” unit in the San Jose Police Department to handle enforcement. The unit, comprised of one sergeant and six officers, would focus on large homeless encampments and the city’s “no return zones.” He said there isn’t a specific trigger as to when the police unit might get called, as those officers will patrol and enforce other municipal codes, such as property damage or tapping into city lights.
Housing Director Erik Soliván said the city’s outreach teams will still be the main point of contact for homeless residents to get connected to services. Another facet of the proposal is expanding the city’s own outreach team to save money and allow the city to collect better data, Mahan said. The city launched a 10-person in-house outreach team earlier this year.
“We want to be able to have a case file essentially for each person who’s out there,” Mahan said. “Our outreach will be smarter, more connected, more data driven and frankly more useful all around.”
While Mahan and other city officials tout the plan as a “compassionate” approach to getting people off the streets, homeless residents and advocates have raised multiple concerns — and accuse the mayor of criminalizing homelessness. Mahan said these types of arrests are rarely charged and a case manager from a rehabilitation site could help expunge the arrests from people’s records.
Costs for the proposal are unclear, but Mahan said more information would be discussed at Monday’s budget hearing.
Homeless people have reported more aggression and harassment from law enforcement since Mahan unveiled his proposal in March. This year, the city started issuing temporary RV bans and sped up sweeping homeless encampments, displacing people around the city.
Sacred Heart Community Service Executive Director Poncho Guevara said the city needs to focus on lowering the cost of living and preventing homelessness rather than criminalizing it. Members of the nonprofit plan to protest Mahan’s policy Monday ahead of the council’s budget hearing.
“The city should get back into the business of actually investing in actual permanent affordable housing and prevention,” Guevara told San José Spotlight. “That’s where you’re going to see real progress, not in essentially blaming individuals that are unhoused for their situation, and demanding they access shelter or resources that literally do not exist.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
