Regardless of hours of spirited dialogue and issues raised by Santa Clara County officers, the San Jose Metropolis Council signed off Tuesday on Mayor Matt Mahan’s controversial proposal to quote and arrest homeless residents who repeatedly refuse shelter.
As San Jose prepares to extend its shelter capability by greater than 1,400 placements this yr, the brand new coverage will incorporate the expectation of accepting shelter into town’s code of conduct for encampments, although the proposal gives some discretion when it is probably not applicable.
With town making a major funding in decreasing homelessness, the vast majority of the Metropolis Council agreed that it was unacceptable for thus many individuals to be dwelling on the streets and that the proposal struck the correct steadiness between compassion and accountability.
“These investments today reduce strain on our public service systems and deliver better outcomes at lower long-term cost,” Vice Mayor Pam Foley mentioned. “San Jose residents have shown tremendous compassion, but they’ve also entrusted us with millions of their hard-earned tax dollars. They deserve to see the results.”
As a part of his March price range message, Mahan unveiled the primary model of the Accountability to Shelter initiative, which initially sought to amend town code to permit citations or arrests of unhoused residents for trespassing in the event that they refused gives of obtainable shelter three or extra occasions over an 18-month interval.
Mahan mentioned the mere refusal of shelter was not against the law however as an alternative “a signal of a problem.”
Whereas the core ideas stay intact, Mahan pivoted the method to amend the code of conduct for encampments and acknowledged the necessity for larger discretion to be constructed into the coverage.
Mahan mentioned the final word objective was to petition behavioral well being courts to mandate remedy if somebody has underlying psychological well being points or is within the throes of habit that impacts their capacity to depart the streets.
To implement the brand new guidelines, San Jose is bringing outreach providers in-house to offer town a greater understanding of what’s being provided and the way unhoused residents are responding. It is usually diverting present police assets to create a brand new unit — staffed with one sergeant and 6 officers — to deal with quality-of-life crimes and implement the brand new coverage when outreach efforts have failed.
The town additionally has mentioned inserting residents in amenities that concentrate on rehabilitation, such because the Mission Avenue Restoration Station, as a substitute for jail.
“When we take a place-based approach, it’s really important when, over the community’s objections, we build new solutions to homelessness in a neighborhood that we just don’t resolve 60 or 70 or 80% of the homelessness … but that we have a pathway and a solution for 100% of the people encamped in the vicinity of that site,” Mahan mentioned. “This is focusing on the group that so often we ignore and allow to continue to persist with severe addiction and mental illness on our streets.”
Over the previous few months, the proposal has elicited fierce opposition from county officers and nonprofit suppliers, who claimed the proposal amounted to criminalizing homelessness. In a letter to the Metropolis Council final month, Board of Supervisors President Otto Lee, District Legal professional Jeff Rosen, County Government James Williams, and Sheriff Robert Jonsen said that the coverage would lead to “unnecessary and ineffective bookings” and divert already strained public security assets.
Regardless of the county’s objections, a majority of residents and companies have voiced help for the proposal, noting how some encampments and repeated encounters with unhoused residents have negatively impacted them.
The unions representing town’s public security departments additionally help the initiative, asserting that the homelessness disaster has pressured them to reply to a lot of requires service.
Between January 2023 and April 2025, the police acquired 44,593 calls, accounting for six.93% of the citywide whole.
District 5 Councilmember Peter Ortiz and District 2 Councilmember Pamela Campos issued the one two dissenting votes.
Ortiz mentioned unhoused residents have ample causes to disclaim shelter and {that a} one-size-fits-all coverage may unjustly penalize them.
Campos additionally warned that the brand new coverage would lead to a “detour back to streets,” noting that Mission Avenue Restoration Station may solely maintain an individual for twenty-four hours and didn’t supply housing.
“The council and the public must understand how everything will work together, and so I want to caution the approach that we are choosing to take where we are placing a huge amount of burden on an individual and framing it as a choice when the real culprit is a system that pushes people experiencing poverty into homelessness,” Campos mentioned.
Whereas Mahan acknowledged that the coverage was imperfect and never a panacea for fixing the homelessness disaster, he mentioned it was important to think about the size at which psychological well being and habit points had been impacting individuals on the streets.
“I don’t think it’s humane or compassionate to allow people to live and die on our streets when they are unable or unwilling to accept the help the city is able to offer, which is interim housing,” Mahan mentioned. “That is not a signal that we should move along and allow people to exercise their civil liberties to camp but that we should instead double down and engage and intervene to save lives, to yes, force the issue, because members of the recovery community will tell you, there is no recovery without accountability.”
Initially Revealed: June 10, 2025 at 4:33 PM PDT
