Santa Clara County is expanding its hotel shelter program for North County homeless residents following the delayed opening of a modular housing site in Palo Alto.
The county has selected WeHope, a nonprofit homeless service provider, to work with up to 40 unhoused adults who will be temporarily housed at a hotel in Sunnyvale or Milpitas. The $1 million contract with WeHope will run through the end of the year or until the Palo Alto temporary housing site opens tentatively in the fall. It was originally planned to open February. WeHope will offer 30-day hotel stays with the option to extend if needed and provide case management services.
WeHope contracted with Sunnyvale last year to run two North County hotel shelter programs, including one which put people camping at the library into a hotel for 30 days. That program just ended.
“We are going to implement the same type of program because it’s already proven to be successful, in the way it’s getting people off the street, getting them into a safe environment and then getting them connected to services that they deserve to have,” Pastor Paul Bains, founder of WeHope, told San José Spotlight.
Having more shelter beds for single adults in North County is an urgent need since the county-owned Sunnyvale shelter no longer provides beds for this demographic. When nonprofit Bill Wilson Center took over shelter operations last year, it switched to servicing families. The shelter previously provided beds for up to 100 adults.
When the Bill Wilson Center changed the longstanding shelter model, it also displaced older, single adult shelter residents. The nonprofit was supposed to allow a number of homeless individuals to stay until the new Palo Alto modular tiny home site opened before fully switching to a family shelter, according to the transition plan outlined by the county. But soon after Bill Wilson Center took over, residents were told they had to go.
Some people couldn’t find suitable housing and ended up on the streets, including Sean Stein, who is sleeping in a friend’s car. Stein has been waiting for a spot in a tiny home site to open.
“I’m just slowly saving up for a car to sleep in,” Stein told San José Spotlight. “Just living day by day.”
Once the Palo Alto site opens in the fall, it’ll have the capacity to serve more than 200 people annually including families and up to 84 single adults.
Sunnyvale has about 471 homeless residents, according to a 2023 point-in-time count, though the tally is considered to be an undercount. While officials conducted a new count earlier this year, results haven’t been released yet.
Otto Lee, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said he’d like to see more shelter options in North County to make up for the loss of beds for single adults.
“We are grappling with a shortage of both temporary and permanent housing across the county,” Lee said at an April 8 meeting. “Each additional bed in North County would help us get closer to meeting a need across the county.”
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.
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