Homeless residents in Campbell will soon find some relief through the city’s new hotel program, adding a resource to the West Valley where little support exists.
The Campbell City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to grant nonprofit Silicon Valley Independent Living Center a $147,500 contract to oversee a hotel program for the homeless community. The two-year pilot program, slated to begin this winter, will offer up to 30 nights a year in the city’s Motel 6 for unhoused individuals and families, as well as those on the brink of homelessness. That will amount to up to 900 overnight stays over the two years. Silicon Valley Independent Living Center will provide wraparound services during the stays, including mental health care, job support, connections to housing programs, case management, substance use programs and food.
During its two-year trial run, the program will help a significant number of Campbell’s 92 homeless residents, according to the 2023 point-in-time count. The pilot is funded by Campbell’s remaining American Rescue Plan funding, federal money municipalities received during the height of the pandemic. It will add a resource for the most vulnerable in the West Valley where the closest homeless shelter is between 5.5 and 8.9 miles away.
Mayor Susan Landry, who has experience working on homeless shelters, said the program needs supportive services to be successful. She said it will be helpful while the city works on its roughly $100,000 West Valley homeless shelter feasibility study.
“That’s why (temporary shelter) is so important … This is like a stop gap,” she told San José Spotlight. “This other study is going to take time.”
The pilot will roll out in phases, beginning with providing shelter during the winter. To qualify, residents must be experiencing either extreme weather conditions, fleeing domestic violence, getting discharged from a hospital, needing emergency medical care, escaping human trafficking or couchsurfing. Families with children under 18, people with disabilities or chronic illness and veterans also qualify.
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center did not respond to requests for comment, but city documents said the nonprofit provides up to 1,000 nights of emergency motel stays annually under an agreement with Santa Clara County.
Campbell’s program goes a step further than similar services nearby. Los Gatos homeless residents can only stay in a hotel during cold, rainy weather or when there’s bad air quality. Unhoused residents with disruptive behavioral health issues aren’t allowed in the town’s program, which serves more than 15 people, and doesn’t have extensive support services.
Campbell Community Development Director Rob Eastwood has led the effort along with Chris Miranda, the city’s new unhoused specialist. Eastwood and his team first proposed allocating $250,000 toward the hotel services, but the city council cut it in half to $112,500 in October. They had already approved an additional $35,000 for inclement weather stays.
Eastwood said if the program succeeds, he’d like to see it expanded to offer more nights and services.
“It’s great to have this tool to use (so we can) either keep folks out of homelessness or get them out of homelessness in any way we can,” he told San José Spotlight.
But some advocates question how successful 30 overnight stays will be for homeless residents.
Jon Pedigo, a parochial vicar at St. Lucy Catholic Parish in Campbell who worked with the San Jose homeless community for about 33 years, said a month is a high bar to set for getting people housed. He said the program is a good start and better than Los Gatos’ efforts, but said he’d like to see more.
Pedigo added he wants to see community support and involvement, something critical in the West Valley where homelessness is more hidden and resources are scarce.
“The residents of Campbell (need to) see this is an important thing that needs to happen, to not fight against it, but support it and really try to make it happen so that nobody in this west side of the valley feels that there is nothing for them here,” he told San José Spotlight.
Older San Jose hotels have been turned into temporary housing for formerly homeless residents, with mixed results. Campbell is much smaller and has fewer resources at its disposal, but Pedigo said cities and agencies need to work together to address systemic homelessness in one of the country’s wealthiest regions.
“We have to ask the bigger question,” he said. “It’s not just this person has failed to do something, it’s the system itself, something inherently wrong with it.”
Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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