Anticipating pent-up frustration and anger over its proposal to use a South San Jose tiny home site for a jail diversion program, Santa Clara County officials asked residents to join in a “mindful minute” ahead of a Wednesday community meeting convened to more fully detail the plan.
It did not go well.
The guided meditation attempt amounted to their only respite as hundreds of residents berated them over a lack of transparency and perceived apathy toward safety concerns, swaying San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan to now oppose the proposal.
“This is just absolutely unacceptable,” said resident Jenny Tran. “I think I’m going to need another, what is it, minute of breathing after this meeting. My blood pressure has just gone through the roof. You can see by the number of people in this meeting that we do not agree with this.”
More than 2,700 South San Jose residents have signed a petition asking the city to reject Santa Clara County’s offer to buy interim housing sites at 6066 Monterey Road and 1072-1082 Vermont St. for $8 million using two grants from the California Health Facilities Financing Authority.
HomeFirst Services currently manages the Monterey Road tiny home site, which, if the sale is approved, would allow the county to serve 78 unhoused residents with mental health issues or “justice involvement.” Under the terms of the grant, the facilities need to be operational by the end of November.
The county held a community meeting in mid-August, two weeks before the sale agreement was supposed to appear on a San Jose City Council agenda. However, the plan immediately faced pushback over public safety concerns and residents’ beliefs that their neighborhood already had shouldered more than its fair share of homelessness solutions. Within a mile of the site, the city has approved hundreds of spaces for interim housing and safe parking.
“This jail diversion program pegged the nerve meter for most, if not all, of the community in South San Jose,” Issa Ajlouny, president of Safety Advocate for Empowering Residents, or S.A.F.E.R. San Jose, told The Mercury News. “It is time to stop using our community as a dumping ground, or there will be another outrage from us as we had for this one.”
After asking the city to delay the sale, District 10 Councilmember Arjun Batra vowed to block the county’s proposal and petitioned the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the purchase this week.
“South San Jose has already absorbed a significant share of the challenges related to homelessness and public safety,” Batra wrote in a letter to the Board of Supervisors. “Our neighborhoods have faced growing encampments, increased crime, and other serious issues that have affected our quality of life. Asking our community to now house a facility that would bring individuals with criminal backgrounds into close proximity of our families, schools and neighborhoods is a step too far.”
County officials, however, said safety precautions were built into its jail diversion program, including the need for courts and District Attorney’s and Public Defender’s offices to sign off any person’s participation. California Penal Code also prevents people who pose an unreasonable risk to public safety from receiving jail diversion consideration.
City and county officials noted that homelessness was often intertwined with crime and substance abuse, meaning that they believed the site’s use would not change much.
“About 15% of people had been to jail within six months of enrolling in the site, and almost half of the participants reported that they had some sort of behavioral health concern, so we’re already serving these people at the Monterey-Bernal site,” program manager Hilary Barroga said.
SV@Home policy director Matthew Reed said the site represented a “service-rich opportunity” and it was difficult for residents to hear when they had already made up their minds.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who attended the meeting as a community member, said Wednesday that city was initially interested in offloading the properties because the county was in a better position to provide better services to homeless residents. While he said that the jail diversion component was never disclosed to the City Council, selling the property would also help balance the city’s budget while saving millions of dollars the city spends operating the facility.
“The county is the primary provider of health and human services in our community and can offer a much higher level and quality of services, particularly around behavioral health, than the city ever could,” Mahan said. “And so we believe the county has a really unique and important role to play in providing health and human services. The city has extended itself and is consuming a lot of resources that are technically general fund resources that could go to police staffing, road paving, park maintenance and the list goes on (with) core city services, where we have a unique responsibility and I would rather spend our dollars.”
However, city and county officials continued to bear the brunt of resident criticisms, with several residents pointing their fingers directly at Mahan.
“There’s transients roaming the street,” said resident Bill Wilson. “There’s people sleeping on the sidewalks that were never there before. You wonder why people have no confidence in the government. It’s because of things like this and people like you who try to push it through.”
In an interview with The Mercury News Thursday, Mahan pushed back on the conspiracy claims, saying he learned about larger details of the county’s plans through the community meetings and was disappointed that residents were not getting answers to their questions.
“I have been very consistent that when we ask the community to embrace solutions on homelessness, we demonstrate in a credible way that their lives will be better off and not worse,” Mahan said. “After two lengthy community meetings, it’s clear to me that we need to go in another direction.”
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