Bramson: Punishment won’t help the unhoused

It’s a simple truth: everyone needs a safe place to sleep.

But instead of working to make that a reality, San Jose’s latest proposal to arrest unhoused residents is a cruel, costly and ineffective response to one of our city’s most urgent crises. The math doesn’t add up, the approach is flawed and at the end of the day this plan does more to score political points than actually solve homelessness.

Let’s start with the numbers. Right now, San Jose has about 2,900 shelter options for an estimated 5,500 unsheltered individuals. That’s barely half the capacity we need — and the reality is even worse when you consider fewer than 10 shelter beds are available across the county on any given day. Meanwhile, 1,400 households are stuck on a waitlist, desperate for a safe place to go, waiting an average of 32 days before they get a referral. That’s one available shelter bed for every 140 people in need. We are nowhere close to having the capacity to provide basic shelter for those already seeking help. So what’s the logic behind criminalizing homelessness when we can’t even offer people a place to go?

We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis. Policies that punish people for being homeless don’t reduce homelessness; they only make it harder for folks to escape it. Fines, citations and arrests don’t lead to housing — they push people deeper into poverty, making it more difficult to access jobs, health care and support services. The research is clear: punitive measures don’t work. They waste taxpayer dollars on legal fees, police resources and court costs while failing to address the root causes of homelessness.

Let’s be honest — this isn’t about fixing the problem. This is about optics. This is about looking tough on homelessness rather than doing the hard work to actually solve it. If we’re serious about ending homelessness, we should keep expanding shelter and housing options, not criminalizing people who have nowhere to go.

Some people might argue policies like this are necessary because a portion of the unhoused population refuses to come inside. But let’s put that into perspective.

The vast majority of unhoused individuals want housing and shelter. Last year alone, we helped more than 3,000 people in Santa Clara County find safe shelter, and placed nearly 4,000 more formerly homeless residents into permanent homes, continuing the local efforts that make a lasting and positive change for our region. The so-called “refusal” of shelter is often not a rejection of help — it’s a rejection of conditions that don’t meet that person’s immediate needs. Maybe a shelter placement requires people to abandon their pets. Maybe it separates families. Maybe it comes with rules that make it impossible for someone to keep their job.

Even if you believe some people simply don’t want help, that doesn’t change the fundamental issue: we do not have enough shelter beds for the people who do. Before we start talking about penalizing those who can’t or won’t accept shelter, we should be focusing on providing enough shelter beds to meet the needs of those who desperately want them. Right now, we’re failing at that, and no amount of grandstanding will change it.

The real solution isn’t hard to see: we need more housing, more shelter and more support services to help people exit homelessness permanently. This means investing in deeply affordable housing, expanding shelter capacity and strengthening programs that help people stabilize their lives. The most effective way to reduce homelessness isn’t through handcuffs — it’s through housing.

Fortunately, we have government agencies, nonprofits and community organizations that are deeply committed to real solutions. But they can’t do it alone. We need our leaders to step up, not with policies that criminalize poverty, but with investments that actually make a difference.

This is not just about policy. It’s about people — people who are part of our community, who deserve dignity and respect and who need real solutions, not empty gestures. If we truly want to tackle homelessness, we need to focus on what works. That means leaving behind failed, expensive, punitive measures and committing to real, lasting change.

Now is the time to act — not with fear, not with punishment, but with compassion and common sense. The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest more in real solutions. The question is: how can we afford not to?

San José Spotlight columnist Ray Bramson is the chief operating officer at Destination: Home, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness in Silicon Valley. His columns appear every second Monday of the month. Contact Ray at [email protected] or follow @rbramson on X.