Tavia Jones felt so unsafe at the Sunnyvale homeless shelter that she would risk being found by her abuser on the streets to avoid living in a facility where she said she was treated as less than a human.
For years, shelters in Santa Clara County have been rife with violence, theft, mistreatment of residents by workers and unsanitary living conditions, based on interviews with residents living in shelters and advocates. In an attempt to bring more accountability and reform to shelters, the California Legislature passed a law in 2021 that requires localities to inspect shelters when a complaint is received, give violation notices to operators and produce yearly reports on shelter conditions. Neither the county, Sunnyvale or San Jose — where most local homeless shelters are located — have filed the required yearly reports, based on a CalMatters investigation.
Representatives for Santa Clara County, San Jose and Sunnyvale told San José Spotlight they either did not receive shelter complaints or that complaints received were unfounded, therefore relieving them from turning in a yearly report.
Shelter residents are unaware they can file a complaint directly with the city or county rather than a shelter operator, according to interviews with multiple people living in local shelters. When residents file complaints to an operator, most complaints fall through the cracks and don’t make it up to the city or county.
Gaps in the system
When Jones stayed at the Sunnyvale shelter on and off from 2018 to 2020, she said workers yelled at her and took donated clothes and food meant for residents. The proximity of the men’s quarters to the women’s section made her feel unsafe. Fights between residents broke out often in front of the women and children. She said one man tried making multiple advances on her. Yet she never wrote up her grievances.
“I just needed to get out of there,” Jones told San José Spotlight. “It was too overwhelming.”
She slept in her tent instead of going to the shelter. At the time, the Sunnyvale shelter was run by nonprofit HomeFirst, one of the largest homeless server providers in the county. Following allegations of racism and concerns that HomeFirst was not providing adequate services, the county contracted with a new service provider.
The nonprofit Bill Wilson Center took over shelter operations in July, but since then residents have shown signs of scabies and lice, multiple residents said. A man with presumed scabies was quarantined in a corner of the women’s section that was separated by a folding wall. Soon after, other people started showing signs of scabies. One person described it feeling like their skin “was on fire.” Bill Wilson Center then moved seven residents with presumed scabies to a hotel for a week.
Josh Selo, CEO of the Bill Wilson Center, said county public health officials told him that until a skin test is performed, scabies cannot be confirmed. He said that there are no confirmed cases of scabies according to the information provided to him by the public health department.
“We’re not going to be receiving the results of the tests because of HIPPA, so those go directly to the folks that have been impacted,” Selo told San José Spotlight. “All folks have been cleared by public health to return.”
One resident said they weren’t offered an extended stay at the hotel when they continued to show signs of scabies, and when they showed the test results to Bill Wilson Center the workers chose to do nothing. The resident confirmed they had scabies by showing San José Spotlight medication prescribed by a doctor to treat scabies.
The resident, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, has filed multiple complaints with the shelter manager and was told Bill Wilson Center was “working on them.” They were unaware about filing complaints directly with the city or county and didn’t know how.
Daniel Gutierrez, chief program officer of Bill Wilson Center’s shelters, said the shelter won’t automatically send a copy of grievances to the county. Written grievances are kept at the shelter.
“Typically our director reviews them and as a team we work on addressing them. If we have to loop in the county we will,” Gutierrez told San José Spotlight.
However, when an incident occurs, they are required to follow the incident procedure and report directly to the county, Selo said. An injury would be considered an incident, as well as presumed scabies.
The Santa Clara County Office of Supportive Housing did not respond to questions about how many shelter complaints it has received since 2021, but a representative said the department works with its contracted providers to address complaints and that workers visit all sites at least monthly.
“Any concerns or issues or incidents at the shelter our team is regularly monitoring,” Acting Director Kathryn Kaminski told San José Spotlight. “In our ideal situation, the grievance is resolved between the (nonprofit) and the client.”
Though Santa Clara County owns the Sunnyvale shelter, a county spokesperson said it can only investigate complaints and cite shelters within unincorporated areas. That puts the onus on cities like San Jose and Sunnyvale to investigate the shelters in their jurisdiction.
“The vast majority of shelters in Santa Clara County are in cities, where the county doesn’t have building code inspection and enforcement authority to investigate substandard conditions,” a county spokesperson told San José Spotlight.
State-funded dollars
California requires that the city or county inspect a shelter after a complaint is received and give operators a notice to correct the violation, if warranted. If the operator fails to rectify the violations, the law prohibits them from receiving state funding.
The state also requires both cities and counties that have received complaints to file reports on shelter conditions with the California Department of Housing and Community Development each year. The localities must detail any hazardous conditions, uncorrected and corrected violations and list operators with more than three violations in a six-month period.
Neither Santa Clara County, San Jose or Sunnyvale have filed these reports. Shelter operators remain largely unchecked and continue to receive state funds.
There are at least 16 shelters in the county, including two that operate during the winter. The county provides funding for eight shelters and spent nearly $6.8 million last fiscal year on shelters, motel vouchers and temporary housing programs — a majority from state grants. This fiscal year, the county is expected to spend $28 million on shelters and temporary housing programs, with $16 million from state grants, according to county data.
In San Jose, where there are 11 shelters, the city received one complaint in 2021 and two complaints in 2023, according to a spokesperson from the department of Planning, Building, and Code Enforcement.
The 2021 complaint was withdrawn after the complainant denied calling, spokesperson Cheryl Wessling told San José Spotlight. In 2023, the department received two shelter complaints for the same shelter. After an investigation, code enforcement “determined that the complaints were unfounded,” Wessling said. No citations were given.
Wessling said code enforcement conducts routine inspections on the city’s shelters. A majority of its shelters fall under “Tier 2” which requires an inspection every five years, including the Boccardo Reception Center on Little Orchard Street. One of its shelters is inspected every six years. Since 2021, the department has conducted routine inspections on 10 shelters which resulted in no citations, Wessling said.
But code enforcement does not see complaints that residents file directly with shelter operators.
Santa Clara County has grappled with homelessness for the past decade, as the region’s population continues to grow. As of last year, the county’s homeless population has grown 3% since 2019 to nearly 10,000, of which 1,026 are in families. San Jose has the fourth highest number of homeless people per capita in the U.S. at 6,340 homeless people.
Jones left the Sunnyvale shelter in 2020 and eventually moved into an apartment on West San Carlos Street. Even as she’s facing an eviction with no idea where she will go, she refuses to go back to a shelter.
“I will never go there again and I will never recommend anyone to go there,” Jones told San José Spotlight.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Reporter B. Sakura Cannestra contributed to the story.
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