San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is taking a hardline approach in his budget plan to get homeless people off the streets. Community advocates are calling it unjust.
Mahan’s upcoming 2025-26 budget message proposes several ways to tackle homelessness, including reallocating more Measure E funding toward temporary shelter, encampment services and homelessness prevention. While proponents say more needs to be done to reign in growing homelessness, opponents argue the mayor’s approach cuts needed affordable housing out of the equation, while criminalizing homeless residents. That includes his plan to require unhoused people to move into temporary housing or be arrested if they refuse shelter after three attempts within 18 months.
Dozens of advocates protested Tuesday at City Hall ahead of the council meeting where councilmembers will vote on the mayor’s budget. People held signs that read “Jail the billionaires, not the unhoused,” “Homes not jails” and “End homelessness not human rights” while shouting, “San Jose has no king, community over everything.”
“Jail is a pathway to the streets,” Tristia Bauman, directing attorney of housing for the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, said at the protest. “The criminal legal system has never solved homelessness. The data shows that … it’s proven to be (a) failed system.”
San Jose has 6,340 unhoused residents and the fourth highest number of homeless people per capita in the nation. The mayor’s plan to achieve “functional zero” — or the point at which the number of people moving into housing exceeds the number of people becoming homeless — has been hyper-focused on building temporary housing to get the roughly 5,500 people off the streets.
“The mayor’s budget plan is long on public relations and short on substance,” Sandy Perry, board vice president of South Bay Community Land Trust, told San José Spotlight. “It distracts people from the fact that, even after the current units in production are completed, the city will still have no shelter beds available for 3,064 of its unhoused residents.”
Cassandra Magana, manager of policy and advocacy at West Valley Community Services, fought back on Mahan’s characterization of those who were “service resistant.”
“Let’s be clear, people want housing and shelter,” Magana said at the protest. “Last year, over 3,000 unhoused people in Santa Clara County moved into shelters when given the opportunity. But right now, 1,400 households are stuck on a waiting list. Yet instead of investing in real solutions, the mayor is choosing to punish people for being poor.”
At one point, Magana lived in her car and was offered temporary housing, but couldn’t accept it even though she wanted to. Working two jobs while being in college full-time prevented her from checking in each night by the required 7 p.m. curfew.
Mahan said 32% of the unhoused refused shelter when the Branham Lane modular housing site opened last month. Yet statistics provided by the housing department showed about 10% of the 5,500 unsheltered homeless people are service resistant.
Formerly homeless resident Olivia Cane said arresting people for refusing shelter only adds to the trauma they are already experiencing without understanding each individual’s unique needs and experiences.
“As someone with lived experience, I can tell you that this approach will not solve the problem but will only harm those of us who have long struggled to afford and maintain a stable life here,” Cane told San José Spotlight. “Criminalizing homelessness only perpetuates the cycle, making it harder for people to escape their circumstances and exacerbating the financial burdens they already face.”
@sanjosespotlight San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is taking a hardline approach in his budget plan to get homeless people off the streets. Community advocates are calling it unjust. Mahan’s upcoming 2025-26 budget message proposes several ways to tackle homeless, including reallocating more Measure E funding toward temporary shelter, encampment services and homelessness prevention. While proponents say more needs to be done to reign in growing homelessness, opponents argue the mayor’s approach cuts needed affordable housing out of the equation, while criminalizing homeless residents. That includes his plan to require unhoused people to move into temporary housing or be arrested if they refuse shelter after three attempts within 18 months. Advocates protested Tuesday at City Hall ahead of the council meeting where councilmembers will vote on the mayor’s budget. Read more at SanJoseSpotlight.com. #sanjose #siliconvalley #southbay #homelessness #bayarea #localnews
As more shelter beds are coming online this year, including the Cherry Avenue and Via del Oro tiny home sites and a safe sleeping site, Mahan wants to explore ways to cut the operating costs of providing onsite security, meals and maintenance by 20%. The city already spends millions of dollars overseeing six tiny homes sites, two safe parking sites and hotels that have been converted into temporary housing. Costs will climb as the city adds 1,000 more beds this year.
The San Jose City Council has already adopted policies signaling a crackdown on homelessness. Earlier this month, city leaders extended sidewalk sleeping and sitting restrictions, allowing police to cite or arrest homeless people if they’re caught sleeping or sitting on the sidewalk from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. The city has started temporarily banning RVs and other lived-in vehicles in designated areas and enacted no return zones after encampments have been swept.
“(Arresting) is wrong in so many ways,” Teresa Palumbo, who lives in an RV at the Berryessa safe parking site, told San José Spotlight. “They are trying to take our rights away.”
Scott Myers-Lipton, professor emeritus at SJSU and lead author of the Silicon Valley Pain Index, which presents research illuminating the struggles of the region’s marginalized residents, said Mahan needs to take a more humane approach.
“My recommendation to Mayor Mahan is to drop his proposal to arrest and jail homeless people, which is punitive, immoral and ineffective and to support a ‘right to shelter’ proposal, like Massachusetts, which guarantees shelter for the unhoused with no jail threat,” Myers-Lipton told San José Spotlight. “And please don’t say that there is not enough money in Silicon Valley to enact this proposal since nine Silicon Valley billionaires hold 15 times more wealth than the bottom half of our households combined.”
Mercy Wong, a formerly homeless resident who volunteers with nonprofit Neighborhood Hands, said there should be a greater push to get people into shelter — otherwise they may never get off the streets. But the crux of the issue is the long waitlists for permanent supportive housing, she said.
“That’s why they don’t want (shelter), because they want permanent housing,” Wong told San José Spotlight.
This story will be updated. Last updated at 2:27 p.m. Original story published March 18 at 12:30 p.m.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.
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