Silicon Valley water agency addresses impact of homelessness

Santa Clara County’s largest water district is weighing how to address the hundreds of homeless people living along local waterways — including potential penalties for those camped on district land.

Valley Water officials on Friday hosted the Unhoused People and Environment Summit featuring district staff, housing nonprofits and county officials to discuss challenges and how they can work together to tackle humanitarian and environmental concerns. Valley Water owns the land rights to 295 miles of the 800 miles of waterways in Santa Clara County, and there are more than 700 people encamped along its property — a number that has risen since the pandemic.

Jennifer Codianne, deputy operating officer at Valley Water, spoke to the environmental concerns of having hundreds of people living along the waterways, of which 83 miles are dedicated to water supply. She said district employees have faced attacks from homeless people when they are out working. The water district has spent $8 million cleaning encampments and removed nearly 6 million pounds of trash and debris over the last three years.

“The more pollution that’s out there, the more complicated that (treatment) process can be,” Codianne said.

In July, the Valley Water board of directors postponed voting on enacting $500 fines or up to 30 days in jail for unhoused people residing on agency-owned land. Directors wanted to hear from speakers at the summit before making a decision, and are set to vote on a potential policy later this year.

In addition to prohibiting people from setting up camp on district land, the policy would also ban trash and pollutants related to encampments, activities that disturb those living nearby and activities that create potential harm for Valley Water employees or the public by those living in encampments. Homeless advocates have previously said the policy would effectively criminalize homelessness.

“The biggest challenge is that we are not treating (homelessness) as the emergency that it is,” Elizabeth Funk, founder of DignityMoves which specializes in building tiny homes, said. “We have sent men to the moon and decoded the human genome, and we can’t get four walls and a roof over people’s heads. This is not rocket science.”

San Jose declared homelessness a continued emergency last October to cut red tape and prioritize building temporary housing for more than 4,400 unsheltered homeless people in the city. There are roughly 6,340 homeless residents in the city and nearly 10,000 countywide.

Funk said while that declaration was important, there’s more that could be done to make the process of building shelter easier. DignityMoves is building the long-awaited tiny home site on Cherry Avenue.

“If we invest in interim (housing) right now and get everybody indoors, that takes the pressure off of the system so that the permanent housing can catch up over time,” Funk said.

Valley Water directors questioned why large companies in the region have done little to help address homelessness with their troves of money.

“We here in Silicon Valley have the largest corporations on the face of the planet, and also the largest philanthropies because of all that money. Where is it at?” Director Tony Estremera said. “They have the ability to help us with this problem, more than anybody else.”

David Low, senior director of policy with nonprofit Destination: Home, said while temporary housing solutions are important, it will only be successful with additional investments in permanent affordable housing and homelessness prevention measures. In 2017, Destination: Home started a homelessness prevention system to give financial and legal assistance to residents facing eviction, with some funding from private donors.

When the homelessness prevention system first launched, three people were becoming unhoused for every one person that found housing in the county, Chad Bojorquez, chief program officer at Destination: Home, said. Now, for every person that gets housed, 1.7 people are falling into homelessness — nearly half of what it was seven years ago. The amount of funding for the homelessness prevention system has also grown to nearly $30 million this year.

“That is substantial … progress that we feel has had an impact on keeping people away from homelessness,” Bojorquez said.

Bojorquez told San José Spotlight this budget allows 1,700 new households to be served through the homelessness prevention system this year, in addition to the 1,000 households enrolled last year. The county took over managing the system in July.

Homeless advocates at the summit expressed disappointment in having no unhoused residents on the panel and for giving little room to hear the perspectives of people living by the creeks.

“I’ll say (the summit) is a good start, but I was also disappointed at the lack of the voice of people who actually live in the creeks,” Jan Chargin, who is formerly homeless, said. “We need to hear them.”

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or follow @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.