Alex Cotterel

The rate of homelessness in San Jose has greatly increased each year with the city reporting the highest numbers it has seen within the past year.

What you need to know:

• City leaders have renewed their efforts to alleviate the housing crisis: building new units of affordable housing, scaling up homelessness prevention assistance and expanding basic needs services through their new bills. 

• By 2025, the city hopes to achieve a 30% reduction in the annual inflow of homelessness, house 20,000 more people through a supportive housing system and serve 2,500 interventions to prevent homelessness through their Homelessness Prevention System. 
• With California Senator Padilla’s introduction of the new California Housing for All Act, the city, like other California districts, will be provided a historic level of federal funding to combat rising homelessness, if the bill is approved.  

Since San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and other San Jose leaders declared a homelessness crisis  in October 2023, city leaders have renewed their efforts to alleviate the crisis: building new units of affordable housing, scaling up homelessness prevention assistance and expanding basic needs services through their new bills. 

As of 2023, more than 6,340 people had been declared homeless in San Jose; this is the largest number the city has seen in 13 years. According to the 2022 San Jose City Report, the most commonly reported obstacles to obtaining permanent housing were high rent, lack of housing availability, insufficient income and psychiatric or emotional conditions. To combat this, San Jose partnered with the Santa Clara County Housing Authority to create a community plan to reduce the number of homeless people between 2020 and 2025. They expanded their work in 2015 to 2019, where they helped more than 8,884 homeless families enter shelters and doubled the number of supportive and temporary housing units. By 2025, the city hopes to achieve a 30% reduction in the annual inflow of homelessness, house 20,000 more people through a supportive housing system and serve 2,500 interventions to prevent homelessness through their Homelessness Prevention System. 

So far in San Jose, six interim housing units have opened since January 2020 to help homeless people stabilize their lives and work toward self-sufficiency. 

“Shelters are a good option to combat the crisis,” junior and Intersections Club activities coordinator Nitya Singh said. “But it really depends on the shelters — some don’t have a lot of space.” 

One such unit is the Family Supportive Housing shelter, on North King Road. Beyond the shelter that they provide for families with children, they have branched out into services that promote skill development for future individual living. c

“The primary source of funds comes from our wonderful and generous donors and the grants that we apply for,” said Leann Lucas, Development Coordinator of Family Supportive Housing shelter. “We are currently working on trying to find grants from the local government that apply to our residents’ needs.”

Although in March 2023 Gov. Gavin Newsom promised $12.7 million to San Jose to build 200 of these homes, the responsibility now falls on San Jose to handle the developmental and design stages, which is estimated to cost an additional $5 million to $10 million for operational costs and services. However, with California Senator Padilla’s introduction of the new California Housing for All Act, the city, like other California districts, will be provided a historic level of federal funding to combat rising homelessness, if the bill is approved.  

“Housing is a basic human right, not a privilege,” Senator Alex Padilla said at a Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. “We need significant federal investments to scale up creative and effective housing solutions.” 

Besides housing, San Jose has also expanded transportation and mental health services for the homeless population through accessible VTA Transit passes available through the Salvation Army; mental health groups such as Recovery Cafe San Jose and medical services like the Better Health Pharmacy. 

“Homelessness is not something you can throw money at and hope it disappears, even though money is necessary to do anything,” Lucas said. “Focusing on what causes homelessness and providing more resources to prevent it from happening is what is important: making rental assistance, mental health counseling and so many other things more accessible.”