San Jose counts homeless people along creek ahead of sweep

San Jose officials have homed in on a stretch of waterway to clean up debris and ban homeless encampments.

A 12-mile stretch along Coyote Creek is slated to be cleared of homeless people starting in January and an encampment ban will be reinforced following that. The areas include Tully Road to Capitol Expressway, O’Toole Lane to Corie Court, around Coyote Meadows and Kelly, Watson and Roosevelt parks.

City officials visited part of the creek last week with workers from homeless nonprofit People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) to count the population along this section of the waterway. The headcount will help determine how many people need to be moved. The count is still ongoing, and results will be known in January.

“Knowing how many people live along our waterways provides needed insight that will shape our interim housing and shelter strategies, helping us get our unhoused neighbors indoors faster by starting outreach early,” Mayor Matt Mahan told San José Spotlight. “We’ve made historic budget investments to address homelessness, and accurate data ensures we’re putting every tax dollar to good use.”

The city is under scrutiny to comply with the Clean Water Act and reduce pollution in the waterways or face a fine. Mahan said roughly 90% of pollution in local creeks and rivers is caused by homeless encampments, and in February the city approved a plan to sweep multiple homeless camps along the Guadalupe River Trail and bar unhoused people from returning.

Officials are also racing to build shelters and tiny homes, though several sites that were supposed to have opened this year face delays. Mahan wants to add 1,500 temporary beds for homeless residents over the next 18 months.

Several tiny home villages are expected to open next year, including the Cherry Avenue site in September, which can house up to 136 people, an expansion of the Rue Ferrari site in October, which can accommodate an additional 134 people, and Via Del Oro early next year, which will accommodate 150 people. San Jose has the largest homeless population in the county, with approximately 6,340 homeless residents, 4,411 of whom live on the street, along waterways or in tents.

A sanctioned encampment is expected to be up and running by the end of March near Watson Park and will serve as a navigation center, where participants will be given three daily meals, have access to shower and laundry facilities and get connected with supportive services. The goal is to move people within 30 days of placement to another temporary housing site such as a tiny home or congregate shelter — where people share a common space with limited or no privacy — or into permanent supportive housing.

“The city is continuing to build out the housing and shelter supply in our housing continuum so unhoused residents have safe, dignified destinations,” city housing department spokesperson Jeff Scott told San José Spotlight. “In this particular instance, we have been engaging with unhoused residents (along Coyote Creek) for many weeks. Case management is available to assist these individuals, and a navigation site will be coming online in 2025 to provide even more assistance to unhoused residents who are seeking shelter and housing.”

Santa Clara County’s main water supplier, Valley Water, also passed a policy that bans homeless people from encamping along 333 miles of creeks where it owns land rights. The ban takes effect Jan. 2.

There are more than 700 people encamped along Valley Water property, and there are an estimated 1,000 homeless people living along creeks and rivers in San Jose. The city is not coordinating with Valley Water to clear encampments located on the agency’s property, Scott said.
There aren’t enough shelter beds for all the people living at the waterways, and shelters in the city are often “jam packed,” homeless advocate Scott Largent previously told San José Spotlight.

There were 900 emergency shelter beds in the city in 2019, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development study — though San Jose has ramped up efforts to house homeless residents. Since then the city has built six emergency temporary housing sites with nearly 500 beds.

Homeless advocate Todd Langton, executive director of Agape Silicon Valley, was at Coyote Creek with his organization a couple weeks ago to distribute food and tents. He said he’s shocked by the amount of trash he saw.

“I do feel like the waterways needs to be cleaned up,” Langton told San José Spotlight. “But the ratio of (people getting abated) doesn’t keep up with the number of transitional housing that is available. So it’s the same old question — where are they going to go?”

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.