San Jose mayor rebukes Newsom's homeless encampment order
SAN JOSE, Calif. - San Jose's mayor said Sunday that he understands Gov. Gavin Newsom's frustration with sprawling homeless encampments, but said swift sweeps are the wrong way to deal with them.
"Clearing encampments only works if we have places for people to go, and require that they use them," San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said.
Housing and homeless advocates disappointed by Newsom's order to clear encampments
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order is finding support in the South Bay. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan agrees that agencies should help get people housed but says it'll take more than just clearing encampments.
Mahan's criticism follows Newsom's order last week for local jurisdictions to ramp up clearings of homelessness encampments. The governor's executive order urges cities to adopt homelessness policies consistent with those of the California Department of Transportation, which, for several years, has aggressively cleared encampments along highways and on-ramps.
Newsom also encouraged cities to apply for more than $3 billion in funds earmarked to assist in efforts to clear encampments.
"There are no more excuses," said Newsom in a recorded statement Thursday. Newsom's executive order follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that overturned a precedent requiring cities to first provide shelter before removing homeless encampments.
Some cities, like San Francisco, took the Supreme Court decision as an invitation to increase homelessness sweeps. The ruling would enable San Francisco to impose penalties on people who had previously refused outreach services, San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the board of supervisors earlier this month.
"San Francisco is already doing what the governor is calling for," Breed's office boasted on Monday.
But as Newsom's directive focuses solely on moving homeless people from streets, numerous politicians and advocacy organizations have responded along the lines of "but to where?"
San Jose isn't the only California city to pump the brakes on Newsom's message. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also criticized Newsom's order, arguing for more housing instead of criminalizing street camping.
"Strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next or give citations instead of housing do not work," she said in the wake of Newsom's order.
Mahan offered a similar rationale for his position.
"Without these solutions, we spend precious taxpayer dollars simply shuffling people from one jurisdiction's land to another's," he said.
The statements from Mahan and Bass echo those from homelessness advocacy organizations like the National Alliance to end Homelessness, which criticized Newsom ordering encampment sweeps without first ensuring housing for homelessness populations.
San Jose has invested in housing. From 2021-2022, San Jose spent about $50 million on constructing permanent and interim housing for homeless people, according to data released by the city. Between 2022 and 2023, it was able to reduce its unsheltered homeless population by more than 10%, even as total homeless in the city increased. The difference, according to San Jose's point-in-time surveys, was that it was able to provide shelter for 5% more people.
In his Sunday statement, Mahan contrasted these reductions with California's statewide homeless population, which saw an increase of about 8,000 unsheltered people during the same time according to federal data.
"Every city must show equal resolve in expanding shelter and in-patient treatment beds so we can offer people a dignified place to go," Mahan said.
Mahan's numbers stood in contrast to the type of metrics used by Newsom to announce his executive order. Instead of focusing on the number of homeless people, Newsom touted the almost 250,000 cubic yards of debris from encampments the state has removed since 2021.
Still, Mahan entertained the possibility of sweeps similar to those ordered by Newsom. But the city would first have to expand the number of places for homeless people to go, he said.
"Our approach is working," Mahan said, "but we have to continue to add safe and managed places for people to go if we are going to be in a position to ban camping citywide.