San Jose is ramping up efforts to clear out homeless encampments as well as people living in cars and RVs on city streets. Robert Handa reports.
San Jose is ramping up efforts to clear out homeless encampments as well as people living in cars and RVs on city streets.
The efforts are designed to clear up sections along the Guadalupe River that include walking trails and even a new, but still unopened, dog park.
San Jose police officers were out Thursday, posting courtesy notices on vehicles, many occupied by the unhoused community, giving them 72-hours to leave the streets at Columbus Park.
It’s part of a “Beautify San Jose” project launched by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
For people living in their cars, like German Gomez, it meant scrambling to move but really only a few streets away.
“Over here is bad. We feel vulnerable about it," he said. But we don’t really have a place to go, you know?”
Homeless advocate Gail Osmer says that’s the age-old problem.
“They’re going to go into neighborhoods. Then they’re going to get kicked out of there. People are going to be mad because they’re in their neighborhoods. There’s nothing going on in this city right now for a plan for where the unhoused are going to go,” Osmer said.
There does appear to be a plan developing.
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This week, the San Jose City Council reaffirmed its intention to create no return zones along the Guadalupe River and cleared a section near downtown, along Woz Way, to make walking trails as well as the children’s discovery museum more accessible and more appealing to the public.
It’s part of an overall plan to make the Guadalupe River more of a public destination.
Only this time, the city is using this cleanup as a pilot program to see if focusing on just one section, rather than the whole trail, will work.
“We’re really trying to see what it takes to keep a place clean. We don’t know what the costs are and we don’t know what that entails and we need to find out,” said San Jose Councilmember Dev. Davis.
Mahan agreed and said it will be compassionate but a hard line approach.
“We’ve got to continue to do outreach and build trust. But at some point, it shouldn’t be someone’s choice to live outside,” Mahan said.
Still officials acknowledge there really aren’t housing options to accommodate so many displaced people in these other sections along the Guadalupe. The city may want to establish no return zones but getting them out may not be as hard as stopping them from coming back.
