San José City Council and the community debated if it is reasonable to arrest unhoused residents for refusing shelter at Tuesday’s City Hall meeting.
San José City Mayor Matt Mahan’s March budget message for 2025-2026 focuses on investing in interim housing, permanent housing, prevention and increasing law enforcement to arrest unhoused residents who violate certain policies.
The mayor’s proposal seeks to arrest unhoused individuals for refusing housing three times, according to a memorandum from Tuesday’s meeting.
Elaina Churchill, a San José resident who became unhoused in June 2024, said she is not happy with the councilmembers’ policies around houselessness.
“What they’re doing to their own people is pathetic,” Churchill said. “Why would you criminalize people being homeless? I’m not on drugs, I’m not an alcoholic. I’m an asset to your community and you’re going to throw me away like a piece of garbage.”
The goal is to have homelessness achieve “functional zero,” which includes ensuring residents are unhoused for less than 30 days on average, according to the same memorandum.
Inside the councilmember chambers on Tuesday, community members and advocates packed the audience seats.
A handful of the audience members held signs that read “Arrest millionaires, not poor people” and “Mahan mass incarceration mayor” written in large letters.
Shaunn Cartwright, the founder of the Unhoused Response Group, sat in the fourth row passing out signs to audience members.
Cartwright said there are many reasons why unhoused residents refuse shelter, including remembering bad incidents with certain housing providers or not functioning well in a congregated setting.
“It just makes me feel their priorities are to punish and abuse unhoused people, rather than to work with them and to reward them with – you know – what they need,” Cartwright said.
Mayor Mahan is proposing to arrest unhoused individuals for refusing shelter because encampments produce multiple safety concerns for the community, according to his March 7 opinion column in The Mercury News.
In February, the Monterey/Branham Emergency Interim Housing opened and one in three unhoused residents camping nearby did not accept a spot in the program, according to the same memorandum.
Misrayn Mendoza, an organizing manager for Amigos De Guadalupe, said the city has a shortage of permanent housing and there is too much “red tape” to build more.
A little over 9,900 community members in Santa Clara County were reported to be unhoused, according to the county’s 2023 Point-in-Time report.
“They should be doing more instead of just talking about it and pointing fingers,” Mendoza said. “They should have people out there giving them real resources. Giving them the real opportunity to become a house again.”
There are a total of 5,000 beds at St. Joseph’s Family Center and a total of 1,675 beds in the Rapid Re-Housing program, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.
The Santa Clara County’s Dept. of Family and the county’s Housing Authority had a total of 1,964 beds combined, according to the same report.
Julian Lake, a policy director in climate and energy for the Bay Area Council, said he is supportive of the mayor’s efforts.
“We need to drastically reduce deaths, mental health costs, healthcare costs on homeless individuals by providing them with interim housing solutions that help them get off of the streets (and) help them stay alive,” Lake said.
Between 2023 and 2024, the city opened 298 new affordable housing units, according to the memorandum.
The council members also want to allocate $50 million to construct new affordable homes, according to the same memorandum.
Political Director Gina Zari at the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors said she also supports the mayor’s budget message because she believes that unhoused residents need to accept housing services.
“In my opinion, it's inhumane to leave them on the streets. This is not inhumane,” Zari said. “I think it's harsh not to compel those who are mentally challenged, mental health challenged, to accept the services. I think that is harsh.”
Around 270 unhoused residents reported they were not using interim housing because shelters in their area were full, according to the same 2023 Point-in-Time report from the county.
According to the same data, 237 unhoused residents also reported they couldn’t stay in interim housing because they were too crowded.
Eva Tarazas, chief public policy officer for Pacific Clinics, said many are houseless because of the inequity between their salary and the cost of living.
The annual income needed to afford a median-priced single-family home is $426,277, according to another memorandum from Tuesday’s meeting.
In 2023, 303 residents also became unhoused because they lost their job, according to a 2023 Point-in-Time report from Santa Clara County.
Tarazas said police officers are not trained to handle mental health crises in the unhoused community and unhoused residents do not trust law enforcement.
“We can't use jails as warehouses for people,” she said. “That's not the intent of our criminal justice system.”
The mayor’s budget message passed with a 7-4 majority.
Mayor Mahan said he and many in the community are in deep agreement that incarceration is not the goal and not a real solution.
Mahan said he is concerned that residents will lose trust in the city if interim housing is not used more by unhoused residents.
“We're going to lose the trust of our residents. We are not going to get additional revenue to continue to fund these solutions, and we will see a much stronger push toward actual criminalization of homelessness,” Mahan said. “People still have freedom of movement, but they can go to another city if they truly do not want to come indoors.”
