The Democratic mayor of San Jose, California, is standing firm on his plan to arrest members of the city’s homeless community who refuse shelter.
Mayor Matt Mahan’s “Responsibility to Shelter” comes amid a fresh crackdown on homelessness from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced Tuesday that the state’s cities and counties should ban homeless encampments.
“Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, and expose the people in encampments to increased risk of sexual violence, criminal activity, property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions,” the statement said.
Mahan’s policy is that those who refuse shelter on three occasions will be detained, arrested, or hospitalized.
Part of the plan requires officials to “make every reasonable effort” to shelter the unhoused. “Our goal is to get everyone indoors, into shelter or treatment,” Mahan told KRON4 this week.
The station’s report mentions that Mahan will have to get the city council on board with the plan before it comes to fruition.
At Monday’s city council budget meeting, Mahan said that city officials have spent millions clearing encampments throughout the city.
“As you know, we already do hundreds of encampment abatements per year, prioritizing areas where the public right of way has been blocked, where there’s an accumulation of trash or biohazards, particularly in our waterways,” the mayor said.
The mayor reiterated that his plan was designed to help the city’s unhoused people.
“When someone’s refusing to come indoors, there’s a sign that there’s a deeper issue, a deeper need, and we have a responsibility to intervene. We just saw in the last week, a police officer stabbed by an unhoused resident. A 15-year-old student punched on his way to school,” he said.
Dozens of protestors rallied outside San Jose’s City Hall Monday to speak out against the bill.
“California as a whole has become ground zero for the homelessness crisis,” Mahan said last month when the plan was first announced.
“Far too often we encounter folks who, largely due to addiction or mental illness, are unwilling or unable to say yes to the help that we’re providing so while we have to hold ourselves responsible for building shelter, people also have a responsibility for coming indoors when it’s being provided,” the mayor said in an NBC News interview.
Prior to his election in November 2022, Mahan worked as a teacher through Teach for America, and was also involved in several business ventures, founding companies focused on “empowering neighborhoods and holding our government accountable”.
According to his mayoral manifesto, Mahan pledges to fight for “basic quality of life issues that impact us every single day.” In the NBC News interview, the mayor claimed the city was adding “over 1000 new shelter options.”
“Most people who are homeless gratefully accept these options and use that as a jumping off point to turn their lives around. We also run into a portion of the population that repeatedly refuses to come indoors, and usually, there’s a pattern,” he said.
“Usually, it has to do with an underlying substance abuse issue, so my proposal is that if someone is repeatedly refusing individual interim housing, we should use the justice system to get them into a drug court and give a judge the ability to mandate treatment.”
According to a 2023 City of San Jose census, the city has over 6,000 unhoused people.
According to a city survey, homelessness was the top concern among San Jose residents by a two-to-one margin, reports The New York Times.
NBC reports that the San Jose City Council will make a budget decision on the policy in June.
