San Jose is breaking ground on its first sanctioned homeless encampment, which will allow 56 people to sleep in tents without fear of being swept this summer.
The vacant lot at 1157 E. Taylor St. will serve as a navigation center, where participants will be given three daily meals and have access to showers, laundry facilities and case management. 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 safe sleeping site will have 24/7 security and is expected to be ready in June, costing $2 million a year to operate.
“We need a spectrum of solutions,” Mayor Matt Mahan said Monday. “We have to move faster. We have to be more cost effective. And you really have to think of these solutions on a continuum. What we can’t do, and what we’ve done for far too long, is embrace a status quo approach that has left thousands of people with no options, thousands of people to live (outside) with no sanitation, no security, no infrastructure.”
The city will implement a no encampment zone near the site on both sides of Coyote Creek from Mabury Road to East Empire Street, as well as around the park and school.
Outreach teams have already created a list of people encamped around the vicinity who will move to the safe sleeping site once it opens, city Housing Director Erik Soliván told San José Spotlight.
The site is fashioned after a similar safe sleeping site in San Diego, though Mahan said San Jose is starting smaller to ensure it can manage the site properly.
Mahan said last year the safe sleeping site would open in March, but Public Works Director Matt Loesch said the plan has always been to open the site in June.
“Our plan has always been this schedule,” Loesch told San José Spotlight. “This project has not been delayed.”
Residents have raised concerns about the site’s proximity to Empire Gardens Elementary School and Watson Park. Homeless people set up camp along nearby Coyote Creek, and the city in recent weeks began sweeping the area and setting up no encampment zones. Neighbors are worried about increased crime and drug dealing in their neighborhood due to the safe sleeping site.
The city will track data on the number of 911 and 311 calls, where people are being transitioned to, how active residents are with case management, as well as whether the city is meeting its goal of moving people out within 30 days. The city will also conduct background checks on participants to ensure sex offenders won’t live at the site, city officials previously told residents at a community meeting last year.
Resident Jefferey Hare said he’s happy to see the city taking this step to restore the park and trails for public use. He said it’s up to residents to keep the city accountable on its promises.
“The city can’t just put up the tents and lay down the water lines and do these structures here and then walk away,” Hare said at the groundbreaking. “They’re going to have to keep on this thing and make sure that it works.”
Sergio Plascencia, a 69-year-old homeless man hanging out at nearby Watson Park, thinks the safe sleeping site is a good idea. He’s staying at an overnight warming shelter, but once it closes this month, he doesn’t know where he’ll go. He said he’s been homeless on and off for the past three decades and hasn’t been offered a space at the site.
“I would want it,” he told San José Spotlight.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.
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