Santa Clara County has 1 shelter bed for every 3 homeless people

The math says it all. Santa Clara County can’t build temporary or permanent housing fast enough to address its growing homeless population.

There are 10,711 homeless people in Santa Clara County, according to a point-in-time count conducted in January. But there are only 3,454 beds across 38 temporary shelters and programs countywide to help homeless people move through an uninterrupted path toward permanent housing. San José Spotlight’s exclusive compilation of data reveals there is only one bed for every three unhoused individuals.

Most of the bed space is in San Jose, with 2,989 beds across 32 identifiable temporary shelters and programs. The county’s largest shelter service is a LifeMoves motel voucher program, which can serve 291 people at a time and is located in San Jose. The largest single shelter is the Boccardo Reception Center, run by HomeFirst and one of the few remaining congregate shelters in the county.

All the shelters are operated by a handful of nonprofits. The most prominent is LifeMoves, which operates 10 shelter programs countywide, totaling 1,052 beds.

San José Spotlight compiled data based on year-round shelters that provide temporary beds, bathrooms and services, such as case management. This definition includes “interim housing,” “emergency housing,” “transitional housing” and “emergency shelters.” This doesn’t include safe parking sites, seasonal overnight warming shelters and confidential shelters, such as domestic violence or youth shelters.

The number of sheltered homeless residents has gone up about 30% since 2023. County officials attribute that to an increase in shelter beds over the past two years.

The county spearheads the region’s homelessness support services, or Continuum of Care. Deputy County Executive Consuelo Hernandez said they take a three-pronged approach — prioritizing prevention, temporary shelter and permanent housing.

“The most efficient way to end homelessness is to prevent someone from becoming homeless to begin with,” Hernandez told San José Spotlight. “Stemming the tide of new families and individuals becoming homeless is a top priority for the county, which is why we have made significant investments in homelessness prevention interventions, including rental assistance.”

There’s a network of support services available for homeless people facing various crises, including more than 100 confidential shelter beds for children or those fleeing domestic violence. Hernandez said the county is working to open a 135-bed shelter in Palo Alto and another shelter in Santa Clara that will house up to 30 families. Along with investments into preventing homelessness and temporary shelter, she highlighted the county’s 2016 Measure A housing bond, which has funded the construction of 5,135 new affordable homes.

Homelessness has been at the forefront in Silicon Valley for years, as officials look for various ways to get people off the streets. During its budget process, the San Jose City Council approved the creation of a new in-house homeless outreach team, which will be able to arrest unhoused people for refusing shelter. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan spearheaded the proposal, and opponents say it will lead to unhoused residents distrusting the city. Councilmembers also shifted the majority of Measure E funds, which had been designated for affordable housing, into the construction of temporary shelters, safe parking and sleeping sites.

Jeff Scott, spokesperson for San Jose’s housing department, said the city is on its way toward adding 1,305 more shelter beds this year, just shy of Mahan’s goal of 1,400 new beds. This is across 11 new shelter sites, one of which is a safe sleeping site, and an expansion of the Rue Ferrari shelter.

“We are taking an all-of-the-above approach to solving unsheltered homelessness, from outreach and temporary supportive services to permanent supportive housing and below-market-rate units and every option in between,” Scott told San José Spotlight.

Multiple cities have explored funding homeless support services over the past few years. Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are launching their own outreach teams and exploring suitable locations for safe parking sites for people living in their vehicles. All five West Valley cities are jointly studying opening a homeless shelter in the region.

San Jose is expected to open its first safe sleeping site in August, which will let 56 people sleep in tents without fear of being swept and provide access to bathrooms, showers, laundry and case management.

Even though Santa Clara County is at the center of the region’s homelessness response, advocates say there are disconnects within the system. Agape Silicon Valley founder Todd Langton said the lack of coordination makes it harder to reduce homelessness.

“The way we (tackle) homelessness is extremely immoral, inefficient and a waste of taxpayer money,” Langton told San José Spotlight.

He said encampment sweeps are a prime example of that disconnect. He’s seen instances where there’s not enough temporary shelter space to offer everyone displaced during a sweep, but enforcement will continue, leaving the people to relocate to other spots on the street. Temporary shelter space is also scarce because there isn’t enough affordable housing for people to move into, sending people back to the streets when their time is up.

To begin amending the cycle, Langton said San Jose and Santa Clara County need to focus on building permanent housing alongside strengthening temporary solutions. He also questioned the impacts of nonprofit support services, pointing to the 2024 state audit of San Jose’s homeless support services, which showed a lack of accountability in the city’s spending on homeless solutions.

Sandy Perry, board vice president at South Bay Community Land Trust, said the nonprofits serving homeless people have been successful in providing shelter, but preventing homelessness is a larger problem. Data from 2023 found that for every one household that was housed, two more became homeless.

Perry also said the 2025 point-in-time count is likely an undercount, given this year’s methodology which focused on areas where homeless people are likely to be found, not a street-by-street search. The county’s new data collection method had volunteers entering data and survey answers during interviews with unhoused residents. This is different from the previous count in 2023 conducted over a two-day period, followed by paper surveys in the field.

He stressed the need to balance solutions, calling out using Measure E’s affordable housing funds on temporary housing sites.

“Housing should be infrastructure, like roads, water (or) schools,” Perry told San José Spotlight. “It shouldn’t be a private commodity, it should be a basic infrastructure of a civilized society.”

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.