San Jose’s City councilmembers discussed the city’s annual report on houselessness and their progress in aiding the unhoused community on Tuesday at City Hall.
Jacky Morales-Ferrand, director of San Jose’s Housing Department, said the report covers how the housing department spent $36 million on programs serving unhoused individuals.
“When I started the housing department 15 years ago, the housing department employed five people on the homeless response team and we had a little over a $2 million budget,” Morales-Ferrand said. “Today we have 12 members on the team and last fiscal year we managed over $43 million of funding.”
Kelly Hemphill, division manager for San Jose’s Homeless Response Team said houselessness is a national crisis that exists beyond San Jose because the nation lacks affordable permanent housing.
In San Jose, 77% of people experiencing houselessness were unsheltered, according to the 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Which means nearly 5,000 San Jose residents live outside on our streets in encampments in parks and vehicles,” Hemphill said.
She said when the housing department began working on a five-year plan to decrease houselessness by 2025, for every one household that moved to permanent housing, two or three became houseless
“Unfortunately, people in San Jose are falling into homelessness faster than we can house them,” Hemphill said.
She said for the first time in 2022, for every household that moves to permanent housing only another 1.7 households become houseless for the first time.
Hemphill said the city has now managed to decrease houselessness by increasing the number of housing placements yearly.
Solving Houselessness
Santa Clara Country has a five-year community plan to end houselessness from 2020 to 2025, according to its written community plan.
Hemphill said the city’s response aims to ensure houselessness is prevented when possible or to make it rare and brief instead of a reoccurring experience.
“Housing solutions include temporary and permanent opportunities to serve individuals and families experiencing houselessness,” Hemphill said “This means the people housed either lived in San Jose prior to becoming houseless.”
She said many go to work and have their kids go to school or they spend most of their time in San Jose.
“People from all jurisdictions in the county were served, but the vast majority were connected to San Jose,” Hemphill said.
She said there are many pathways to permanent housing.
“Some moved into housing with the assistance of a rapid rehousing program. Some received assistance in an interim shelter program and then moved to permanent housing, some reunited and moved back in with family,” Hemphill said. “All of them received assistance from supportive housing system.”
She also said the city is using funding from the state to buy underused hotels to eventually repurpose them into affordable housing for individuals experiencing houselessness.
San Jose currently has 2,193 beds available for the unhoused community, according to a memorandum provided by the city.
However, 10,028 people in Santa Clara County were reported to be unhoused, according to the same annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
“Positive temporary housing outcomes are strongly linked connections to permanent housing programs,” Hemphill said.
Hemphill said interim housing programs are designed to support people waiting for their housing unit to be built or are searching for a unit that have the highest rates of people moving into permanent housing.
“We must continue to increase the capacity of permanent housing programs if we want to increase positive outcomes for shelter participants,” Hemphill said.
Angela Smith, sociology junior and a houseless advocate for Students Against Sweeps (SAS), said during an interview over the phone that she and other advocates from SAS are not seeing the same success out in the community.
Smith said Students Against Sweeps is a student-led campaign that aims to end houseless encampment sweeps in San Jose.
“I mean, that number looks really great and everything, but that's just kind of not just not really what we're seeing,” Smith said.
She said it appears a very small percentage of unhoused people are successfully making the move to permanent housing.
“[The] city run outreach is misleading because people are constantly lying on those surveys,” Smith said.
She said some lie during surveys because many in the unhoused community are aware that lying about certain issues they are experiencing may increase their chances to receive housing.
“They know that lying about the amount of trauma they've experienced or lying about the lifestyle that they live will make them more likely to qualify for housing,” Smith said.
She said some unhoused individuals who currently have a job and can save money are close to being able to afford their own housing, but are considered less qualified to receive permanent housing because of government surveys and qualifications.
“So those surveys that the city does during their outreach, it’s like a filter almost,” Smith said. “It filters out a lot of people that would otherwise qualify for housing.”
She also said some unhoused individuals are able to receive temporary housing from the government, but continue to keep their temporary shelters or tents as a backup plan.
What Didn’t Work
Ragan Henninger, deputy director for San Jose’s Housing Department, said funding to support services for the unhoused community and for affordable housing are mainly from federal entitlement funds.
Henninger said this includes $29 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that are given to the state.
She said this funding largely funds specific services, including emergency interim housing operations and construction and the city’s houseless prevention system.
“That's one-time money and one-time money is very challenging,” she said. “When you're trying to scale a program and you can't rely on a funding source beyond one year. It's very hard for nonprofits to scale a program to meet the need when we're using one-time funds.”
Henninger said the city does have certain sources of funding that are ongoing. For example, the city saves funding under two policies, Measure E and Measure A.
“Measure E is ongoing but again, it can fluctuate based on the real estate market,” she said.
San Jose’s Vice Mayor Rosemary Kamei said she thinks the community will rise to the challenge of ending houselessness, but she is concerned about funding because all the money from Measure A has already been reallocated or used.
“One of the things that I'm concerned about is, you know, now that the measure A, the county measure A funds,” she said. “I didn’t think they were going to run out so fast, but they have, they've all been allocated.”
Morales-Ferrand said she is looking into putting on the ballot an initiative to organize more funding towards affordable housing.
“It could bring up to a billion dollars for the city of San Jose and a billion dollars to the county. That's a tremendous opportunity for us to continue this work,” she said.
Morales-Ferrand however said she does not expect the city to reach its goal of ending houselessness by 2025.
She said she thinks it is unlikely the city will reach its goal because the city has used large portions of its funding and is struggling to continue having enough services for the unhoused community.
“The federal government has to do more for affordable housing. The state has to do more for affordable housing, and we have to continue our commitment to affordable housing,” Morales-Ferrand said.
