As homeless resident Deborah Santos watched her trailer go up in flames, she and her son wondered where they would stay—a homeless shelter, a motel room or maybe even a temporary tiny home. She was given a two-person tent and a blanket. Residents at the Columbus Park homeless encampment near downtown San Jose say a...
San Jose State University students achieved a small victory for peers in need of temporary emergency beds. The university recently agreed to allow students access to the beds for four weeks rather than 48 hours without asking them to take out a loan, Lana Gomez, president of the Student Homeless Alliance, told San José Spotlight....
San Jose has cleared out 224 homeless encampments since January, with more than 75% of those removals happening in Districts 3 and 7, city data shows. City officials said a sweep could mean booting one person from their camping spot—or clearing out a massive site with multiple people. Advocates, who have long called for the...
San Jose officials are quietly inquiring about hotels that might fit the criteria to acquire through Project Homekey funds in 2022. Mayor Sam Liccardo recently contacted the owner of two hotels—the Quality Inn on 13th Street and the Tully Inn on Tully Road—to see if they might be a good fit for the Project Homekey...
In an effort to clear one of the Bay Area’s largest homeless camps, San Jose installed barriers near Columbus Park right before Thanksgiving, prompting concern from some unhoused advocates. The city installed K-Rail barriers at the intersection of Spring and Hedding streets and east of it earlier this month. The city also placed “no outlet/not...
Folks tend to travel long distances to eat on Thanksgiving. But for unhoused residents in San Jose, Thanksgiving dinner is coming to them. Amid the homeless encampment at Columbus Park in San Jose, faith-based nonprofit CityTeam helped brighten up Thanksgiving for many unhoused residents by bringing hot meals to the park. The nonprofit has a tradition...
Formerly homeless residents are on edge following a suspicious death at a downtown San Jose homeless housing complex. A woman who was visiting a tenant died early Monday morning at Second Street Studios, according to residents, the San Jose Police Department and housing provider First Community Housing. A group of residents are pushing the complex’s...
San Jose is shutting down a controversial safe parking site for unhoused residents just three months after it opened. The city announced the closure of the temporary safe parking site at 71 Vista Montaña on Monday. The site, which opened in early September, was potentially slated to remain open for nine months. But the city...
With the recent influx in state and federal funding for homeless housing, San Jose is racing to add roughly 550 units of permanent and interim housing across the city. In September, Mayor Sam Liccardo and several councilmembers proposed a lofty goal to provide 2,300 new permanent and transitional housing units by the end of 2022...
The clearing of a major homeless encampment near San Jose’s Columbus Park has forced scores of unhoused residents to live together in squalid, cramped conditions. Over the last two months, the city has cleared about two-thirds of a 40-acre plot of city-owned land near Columbus Park. About 150 unhoused people, 200 vehicles—of which 53 are...
