Santa Clara County Local News: Homelessness

San Jose officials have zeroed in on the city's first location for a sanctioned encampment, where homeless people will be allowed to stay inside tents without fear of being swept.

Emotions ran high at a homeless encampment near a San Jose park as the city began sweeping the streets that unhoused residents called home.

Last year, a renovated San Jose hotel on The Alameda reopened with much fanfare to house homeless residents. But problems have cropped up from the start, according to people who live there.

Over the next 18 months, San Jose may see four tiny home sites built, offering hundreds of beds to help people living on the streets transition to permanent housing. But getting there remains a challenge.

Santa Clara County wants to purchase a tiny home village for homeless residents from San Jose and use it to house formerly incarcerated people — sparking safety concerns from nearby homeowners.

Sunnyvale will have a new outreach team assisting its homeless residents after scrutinizing the city’s previous provider.

As San Jose develops plans for sanctioned homeless encampments, Mayor Matt Mahan traveled to San Diego to see what he could glean.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes for local governments to take swift action to clear homeless camps, local housing advocates are standing together against policies they say criminalize being unhoused.

The fifth annual Silicon Valley Pain Index, an easily understandable, statistical overview of the structured inequalities in Silicon Valley, was recently released and features new data that highlight the region’s persistent inequalities. There are almost 200 statistics in the pain index, which can be organized around the ideas of wealth, poverty and inequality.

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.

The Campbell City Council unanimously supported a $100,000 West Valley shelter feasibility study earlier this month using some of its remaining American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funds. The study is one of the first in the West Valley to explore creating a local shelter for the more than 200 unhoused people in the area, according to the 2023 point-in-time count, which advocates said is often an undercount.