Percival: Tackling homelessness requires government agencies to collaborate

Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass v Johnson ruled city governments could sweep homeless encampments without violating individuals’ rights. Before this ruling, cities were prohibited from removing unhoused people from public spaces if they had no shelters available.

In Silicon Valley, the debate following the Grants Pass decision focused on problems with criminalizing unsheltered homelessness. There has been far less focus why so many cities lacked shelter capacity in the first place and what this means for their ability to address homelessness humanely and effectively.

Historically, California cities have rarely invested in social services, including shelters for the homeless. Reasons why can be traced to the structure of the U.S. government. Political scientists regularly describe the limits of city government. Cities have a narrow band of issues they typically oversee: Land use, policing, fire, roads and sewers.

Cities don’t operate in isolation, however. They compete for residents, business and tax revenue. Knowing people can “vote with their feet,” leaders of cities worry people will move elsewhere if they feel overburdened by taxes or are unhappy with the quality of services. Cities thus try to keep taxes low and avoid costly social services that disproportionately benefit the disadvantaged.

One overlooked consequence of the Grants Pass decision is it amplified tensions that have long simmered between cities. We’ve seen this in Silicon Valley.

In February, Fremont passed the most punitive ban on homeless encampments in the state. This was rightfully criticized, but fundamentally it represents an example of a city’s elected representatives responding to public demands to address the crisis. Zero tolerance won’t fix the underlying problem, but that’s not the point. Politically, city leaders could show residents they were taking action. What’s left unsaid is when a city’s unhoused population leaves, they become another jurisdiction’s problem.

Under Mayor Matt Mahan’s leadership, San Jose has made atypical investments in temporary housing for the homeless. Mahan recently introduced a controversial plan for arresting unsheltered homeless residents if they refuse repeated calls to go inside.

Mahan’s approach must be viewed within the larger context. Similar to Fremont, the mayor knows voters in San Jose want homelessness addressed and will hold him accountable if he’s unsuccessful. At the same time, San Jose’s success is tied, at least in part, to the spillover effects of decisions made by neighboring cities. Seeing tougher approaches to homelessness elsewhere, Mahan is now threatening arrests even as he acknowledges the criminal justice system can’t fix the problem.

The point is not to blame any one city or group of elected officials for homelessness, but to illustrate the larger governance problem we face: On homelessness, cities have a political incentive to work at cross purposes. The Supreme Court in its Grants Pass decision made things even worse by inviting city officials to follow their worst political instincts.

To his credit, Mayor Mahan is one of the few politicians who emphasizes homelessness is as much a governance problem as it is a story about poverty, mental health or addiction. He supports state legislation requiring counties to shoulder a greater share of cities’ shelter costs and he’s pushed for stronger regional governing partnerships that better align cities’ interests.

Political leaders would be well-served by spending more time thinking about homelessness as a governance problem. Too often we think of governing structures and processes as immovable objects. They are not. We can make them work for better when they become central to our policy conversations. We can’t expect to achieve success on a complex issue like homelessness if our city governments closest to the problem see each other as repositories for displacement rather than partners with shared responsibilities.

Garrick Percival is a professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at San Jose State University.