San Jose reveals location for homeless ‘Safe Sleeping Site’

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — San Jose will open its first-ever “Safe Sleeping Site” for homeless people seeking alternatives to city shelters. On Thursday, city officials announced that the sleeping site will be located downtown at 1157 East Taylor Street, next to Watson Park.

“This location was selected from eight potential sites that the San Jose City Council unanimously approved for further analysis. If it continues to prove suitable, it will be the first safe sleeping site to open in San Jose,” the mayor’s office wrote.

San Jose is home to nearly 1 million residents. About 6,340 are unsheltered, a 2023 point-in-time count found.

This week, representatives of Mayor Matt Mahan and District 3 Councilmember Omar Torres canvassed neighborhoods around Watson Park to notify homeowners of the Safe Sleeping Site plan.

Mayor Matt Mahan said, “We did a clean-up at Watson Park, and the conditions were shocking — a greenspace that should be open and available for all was covered in human excrement, filled with debris and overrun by shopping carts. We can’t allow our public spaces to fall into squalor any more than we can allow our homeless neighbors to live in it. This area will be the first to see the benefits of this new solution to homelessness — one that will preserve our park and protect it from re-encampment.”

In this year’s budget, the City Council voted unanimously to create several Safe Sleeping Sites with the capacity to serve 500 people who currently live on the streets or along waterways. Nearly 90 percent of pollution flowing through local rivers and creeks was caused by homeless encampments, city officials said.

“I’ve lived in San Jose for several decades, witnessing the increasing plight of people living in the streets, the creeks, or anywhere they could find,” said Jeff Levine, a local resident and spokesperson for the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association.

The Safe Sleeping Site at 1157 East Taylor Street is slated to open in early 2025.

The mayor’s office wrote, “Located near the Coyote Creek and Watson Park, both of which are heavily encamped and require frequent calls for (police) service, the Taylor St. safe sleeping site will serve unhoused residents in the immediate vicinity first. To preserve progress, the City will establish no camping zones within a two-block radius of the site.”

Thursday’s announcement follows Mayor Mahan’s trip to San Diego, where he toured one of San Diego’s safe sleeping sites , called “O Lot.” San Diego’s site contains 400 raised and insulated tents, and provides on-site amenities including restrooms, showers, laundry, and storage trailers.

San Diego attorney and homeless advocate Coleen Cusack said out of the 1,300 people cycling through O Lot tents, only 82 have been permanently housed. “To pass this off as anything other than hiding homeless, so the common folk don’t need to cast their eyes, is disingenuous,” Cusack told KRON4.

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