San Jose Mayor Mahan looks to San Diego for housing solution

SAN JOSE, Calif. ( KRON ) – San Jose’s mayor is looking at another California city for ideas on how to deal with homelessness. This is happening as his city continues to face pressure to clean up encampments, both from state and local levels.

Soon, San Jose’s unhoused population could be cycling through tent sites — much like what is being done in San Diego . It’s just four walls, but Mayor Matt Mahan says it may be their best bet to finding permanent housing for the unsheltered.

“We have thousands of people in conditions that are unsafe and unsanitary,” he told KRON4. “We are now looking to experiment with that type of solution in San Jose.”

Mahan was in San Diego last week to observe the city’s plan for housing the homeless, hoping to find inspiration for his own city.

He was with San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria. The tent site in Balboa Park is hosting around 400 people. Advocates say around 1,300 people have cycled through in the last year.

“It’s not the end goal but gives us an alternative to the streets. We have to get people into managed sites,” Mahan said.

The San Jose mayor’s office has already proposed around nine camping sites for unhoused people, including one off East Taylor Street. But homeless advocates both in San Jose and in San Diego say this project is not a silver bullet.

San Diego attorney and homeless advocate Coleen Cusack has followed the city’s tent site since it started and worked with unhoused organizations that help manage the site. She says mold issues have persisted, along with pests.

“To pass this off as anything other than hiding homeless, so the common folk don’t need to cast their eyes is disingenuous,” she said.

She says out of the 1,300 people cycling through the tents, around 82 people have been permanently housed. It’s something, but Cusack says San Jose needs to approach their proposed camps carefully. She says having a place to seek shelter, as long as there is housing at the end of the tunnel, could potentially work.

San Jose homeless advocate Shaunn Cartwright says the city needs to listen to people’s concerns as they build these sites. Her concern is also the lack of housing, and she worries people will just be stuck at these tents with nowhere to go.

“That is the true failure of all of this. People are still going to fail out of tent cities, of tiny homes if they don’t have any place to go” she said.

Mahan says housing is an issue but he’d rather set up a place for people to get care than let more people die on the streets.

“Building more housing has to be a core part of our long-term strategy,” he said. “I’m just not for people suffering and dying on our streets.”

The city has already earmarked several million dollars to make sanctioned encampments a reality. Mahan says the first site will host a smaller number of people than the several hundred tents in San Diego. He expects the first site to open in early 2025

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