With the vast majority of waterway pollution caused by homeless encampments, San Jose officials and nonprofit partners have begun to assess the extent of the problem along the worst stretches of the city’s creeks and streams.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan joined staff from homeless nonprofit providers on Tuesday morning to conduct a manual count of homeless residents living along Coyote Creek as the city pushes to ban encampments and establish no-return zones as it connects them to services and more stable housing.
“We need to preserve our progress,” Mahan told The Mercury News. “We should be offering basic, dignified shelter to folks and repeatedly do outreach and offer it. Eventually, we have to convey to people who refuse shelter and are in public spaces, along major roadways, near schools, or otherwise sensitive areas that we need to ban encampments.”
As part of the requirements to maintain its stormwater permits and comply with the Clean Water Act, San Jose has targeted the cleanup and banning of encampments along 12 miles of its 140 mile-plus waterway system.
City officials have estimated that 88% of pollution comes from more than a thousand people living in homeless encampments along waterways. If San Jose fails to meet the Clean Water Act requirements, Mahan said the city faces fines of up to $67,000 per pollutant, which is why the city made an unprecedented commitment of $27 million to meet its obligations.
With the financial resources to clean up its waterways, the city also has committed to increasing interim housing solutions like tiny homes and safe parking sites, which it says go hand-in-hand with solving the problem.
Along with adding hundreds of tiny homes over the next 18 months, San Jose will also be opening up safe sleeping sites that provide 500 tents across the city to provide the necessary inventory to relocate those living along waterways. The city has selected its first site at 1157 E. Taylor St., near Watson Park, to pilot the program, which will start off serving more than 50 residents. The goal is for homeless residents to stay for 30 days before transitioning to another shelter site.
Housing Director Erik Solivan said that a more targeted, more focused count would help inform the city on how it should build out its supply system and move people into alternative shelters.
San Jose began to experiment with banning encampments and enforcing no-return zones earlier this year along stretches of the Guadalupe River between the Children’s Discovery Museum and Julian Street.
The city is hoping to replicate some of the successes in that particular stretch, which had grown to upwards of 200 people at its most dire point.
“We offered shelter and services to folks and many of the people ended up in the Arena Hotel, a few people were placed directly in the permanent affordable housing and quite a few people were service resistant and said ‘no thanks’ and just moved to another part of the city,” Mahan said. “We did however get a significant portion of people indoors and we were able to clean up along the river through the downtown and if you ask Adobe or Zoom or other stakeholders, it has significantly improved their quality of lives: less trash, less crime and people are now feeling comfortable going down to the waterway to walk along the trail.”
Coyote Creek, in particular, has become home to some of the largest encampments in the city.
Years ago, it was home to one of the most massive, notorious encampments, known as “The Jungle.”
While the stretches city officials inspected Tuesday were in no way reminiscent of pictures from the past, they still found residents living in tents, makeshift structures, shopping carts, buckets with human waste and one woman even hanging out in a turned-over metal trash bin to escape the elements by the creek just off of Story Road.
As staff from PATH (Programs by People Assisting the Homeless) talked to the woman, they quickly learned she wanted to better her life but felt stalled because she was unaware of services that could help benefit her situation.
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For those interested in services, PATH program manager Dana Evans said her organization creates an individual service plan with short-term and long-term goals that are obtainable to avoid feelings of hopelessness and to let people know there is a viable path forward with the proper resources and support.
“Historically, it’s been an abatement and nowhere to go,” Evans said. “Now, we’re trying to be proactive and have a resolution for a site for them actually to go to, so that’s going to look like a tiny home or a structure with your private locked key indoors, which everyone wants because no one really prefers other shelters …We want to connect them with resources, making sure that they have a safe place, getting them to navigate the system. It’s a huge system, and if you’re not familiar with the navigation, you could get lost.”
