The Salvation Army is teaming up with San Jose and Santa Clara County to help tackle the South Bay's homelessness crisis.
The Salvation Army has been a part of San Jose since the 1800s and at its current site on Fourth Street for the past 60 years, but changes are coming to the location.
On Monday, leaders from the county, the city and the nonprofit world unveiled plans to help the Salvation Army expand into housing more homeless.
“Today we’re announcing a reset and sort of a makeover for the Salvation Army campus," county Supervisor Cindy Chavez said.
Essentially, the Emmanuel House is an 88-bed sober living environment that will be expanded to 112 and sending the overall available beds to over 300.
Nonprofit advocates praised the ambitious and upgraded facilities, saying it’s not true that homeless people prefer the streets.
"They prefer the streets to what they’re being offered," Dignity Health CEO Elizabeth Funk said. "They don't want to be in a bunk bed and group shelter. Dignity is proud to offer private rooms. If somebody has recently made the step to try to get sober, they don’t want to share a shelter with somebody who is shooting up at 2 in the morning."
The agencies will build temporary housing on a grass lot to accommodate those who will be displaced during the transformation, then those units will be turned into permanent housing.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmember Omar Torres said the city has been meeting with neighborhood groups to keep them in the loop.
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Chavez said for the first time Salvation Army’s services will be available to the spiking number of unhoused women with children.
"This spike, we’re not just seeing it on the streets but all of our school districts have seen an increase in the number of children that are being designated as homeless," she said.
Salvation Army acknowledged it actually has a no women policy, which will go away officially when the groundbreaking on the site starts probably sometime in the fall.
