☆ SJ Homelessness committee ignores creative new ideas for addressing citizen concerns about encampments
The Mayor's direction couldn't have been clearer: Let's come up with bold, new creative metrics to determine the effectiveness of solutions to SJ's systemic homelessness crisis, with a focus on cheaper/faster/more fruitful solutions for the unsheltered community. Committee members and the public provided many innovative recommendations. But the nonprofit-heavy committee roster just shut their eyes to those proposals and replayed the same old expensive, slow, Permanent Supportive Housing status quo—effectively leaving the cruel policy of sanctioned encampments intact. The Opp Now team parses what the committee left unaddressed.
1. No recommendations for protecting or clearing any parks.
The loss of wide swaths of public space to encampments is perhaps the largest single area of citizen concern regarding homelessness; and the committee offered no proposals, action plans, or metrics to address this growing complication.
2. No specific encampments identified for re-housing or measures to prevent re-encampment.
A businesslike approach to homelessness would target particular encampments for redress, including tactics to re-house and reclaim the most troublesome tent congregations. None of this occured at the committee.
3. No enforcement of anti-camping laws in city parks, sidewalks, monuments, or in front of businesses.
San Jose already has a number of ordinances and legal restrictions regarding camping in public spaces, litter, defacing public property, and defacing public art. When it comes to our homeless population, these are rarely—if ever—enforced. As a result, encampments routinely degrade into chaotic zones of illegality. The committee had an opportunity to call for a revitalized effort to return to the rule of law, but didn't.
4. No increased funding for trash pick-up.
One of the biggest worries citizens cite about encampments is the tons of trash the congregant areas create, which foster unhealthy, dangerous, and unsightly no-go zones all across the city. The committee had the opportunity to identify and fund trash pick-up resources, but rejected the idea.
Read the Homelessness Mayoral Transition Committee Report here.
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Image by Tanya Gupta