After months of promises and protests, plans between San Jose State administrators and local lawmakers to alleviate student homelessness are on the verge of fruition.
Both San Jose lawmakers and school representatives say they have met to discuss potential collaboration and will announce their plans later in the Fall.
The Student Homeless Alliance (SHA), which has demonstrated at SJSU several times, investigated the possibility of outside support and spoke to state and city lawmakers about finding relief for the unsheltered.
“We’ve been trying to figure out the best way to find solutions and how we go about and find people we need to sit down at the table,” former SHA president Mayra Bernabe said.
Bernabe and several other members of SHA met with local leaders throughout the summer, including San Jose Mayor
Sam Liccardo.
During his budget message in March, Liccardo expressed a desire to help homeless students of SJSU.
However, the tax Liccardo proposed does not guarantee that money will land straight in the hands of homeless students.
“There’s a delicate dance we have to do here,” Liccardo said.
He explained that support from the city would not be immediate and allocating funds would have to be approved through a City Council resolution to designate the money to
homeless students.
“We may be passing a council resolution saying, ‘This is how we’d like to spend the money, but that would be
non-binding,’ ” Liccardo said. “So there’s going to need to be probably some level of trust here within all of us, among coalition partners.”
The funding Liccardo proposed is what he calls a “general tax,” which cannot be
designated for an immediate “particular purpose.”
The mayor said his goal is to pass a ballot measure by November 2020.
“SHA was very clear that they wanted to see some commitment from the city that would affect student homelessness and student affordable housing concerns,”
Liccardo said.
Advocates from SHA expect their involvement with the city’s policy making to strengthen their cause this semester.
“It’s a slow and steady progress,” Bernabe said. “[Liccardo’s] definitely very tuned into what we’re doing and wanting to involve us in
the process.”
In order to find other methods of funding, SHA spoke with a representative from assembly member Evan Low’s office to see if more state funds can be used to alleviate student homelessness.
“I think there’s a lot of work to be done also on the state level, which is also why we’re continuing to meet with our state leaders and our assembly members,” Bernabe said. “This is just not San Jose State, it’s
across the state.”
As SHA sought out different methods of support from lawmakers outside of SJSU, they discussed potential changes San Jose State could make by this semester.
Vice President of Student Affairs Patrick Day informed SHA that San Jose State is
set to approve the construction of a centralized facility for SJSU Cares in Clark Hall.
While SHA saw that as a success, the advocates questioned Day on what adjustments could be made to SJSU Cares criteria for serving students in distress.
“Things are shifting, things change, on this issue there’s great complexity, and so the idea that you’re going to get it right once two years ago, that’s not real,” Day told the Spartan Daily.
Day said the university is evaluating different ways to obtain data on student homelessness after a 2018 California State University study showed that 13% of
students at SJSU experienced homelessness.
“You have a number that says 13%,” Day said, “but that’s really an inclusive number of
multiple forms of what I would call housing
insecurity.”
It has been difficult to establish a particular trend with student homelessness, making it challenging to create criteria for every student in need,
Day said.
“We just need to understand what each one of those buckets are,” Day said. “It’s a misperception if we think everyone is couchsurfing, it’s a misperception if we think everyone is sleeping in their cars.”
Despite the variety of situations students can be in, Day said SJSU Cares will help any student that asks for assistance, no matter what
the circumstances are.
“Part of what we want to understand by getting at that number is how we devote resources, but we’re going to help any student that comes into the office,” Day said.
