San Jose Spotlight
Los Gatos' temperature hit 107 degrees as Mason, wearing a black coat and backpack, walked from his camp in the brush toward Highway 17. He started having heat-related symptoms and laid down, heaving. He didn't want to die on the streets.
Mason, who asked to only use his first name, made it back to the shade of his pop-up canopy. He knew the dangers of extreme heat because he heard about a San Jose unhoused resident who died last week. He also understood the benefits of going to a cooling center and knew about one of the two centers in Los Gatos, but he was hesitant to leave his belongings, fearful they would be stolen or thrown out. Years of being homeless has made him apprehensive.
"It's kind of funny that we heard about this guy who passed away in San Jose, but we didn't know that there's (another) cooling center," Mason told San Jose Spotlight. "It's kind of funny where the information goes or what's considered to be a priority of information."
He is one of thousands of unhoused residents countywide isolated from information about available resources during extreme weather conditions. It's an issue advocates said can lead to deadly consequences when cities, the county, nonprofit providers and transit agencies like VTA, which provides free rides to cooling centers, have a mixed bag of outreach services when temperatures soar.
Matt Mokhtarian, a Santa Clara County Fire Department captain and spokesperson, said as a first responder, he worries unhoused residents aren't receiving information about critical resources during extreme weather due to mixed messaging from various agencies.
"How do we get that communication to them and and whose job is it to try to communicate to them effectively?" he told San Jose Spotlight. "How do we start making a difference for them when they really need this time to find shelter?"
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office is investigating five deaths in the unhoused community this month that are potentially related to the heat, a county spokesperson said. Roughly 50 unhoused people have died countywide since 2019 with weather-related causes listed as factors, such as hyperthermia and hypothermia, a San Jose Spotlight review of county medical examiner data revealed. That number is likely an undercount, with more than 20 cases still pending a cause of death this year.
Not enough coordination
Outreach varies from the roughly 221 unhoused people in the West Valley, to the 6,266 unhoused residents in San Jose, to the 9,903 unhoused people in the county identified in last year's point-in-time count, though county officials and advocates said the tally is often an undercount.
The cities and county rely on local advocates and nonprofit service providers, such as Abode Services, to provide resources and supplies to unhoused residents -- and to get the word out about cooling centers.
Todd Langton, executive director of homelessness nonprofit Agape Silicon Valley and founder of the Coalition for the Unhoused of Silicon Valley, said that's where the problem starts. He said the different outreach approaches creates disorganization and a lack of communication that adds to advocates working in silos, which reduces effectiveness.
"The way Silicon Valley handles our homeless situation is extremely dysfunctional. It's unorganized, inefficient and it's slow to react, and because of that, people are dying needlessly," Langton told San Jose Spotlight.
He added he was unaware of the VTA program and said that's problematic as someone who works directly with the unhoused.
The transit agency said it relies mainly on word of mouth about the program through the county, a VTA spokesperson said.
There are 22 designated cooling centers countywide, with three in San Jose in addition to libraries and lobbies in emergency shelters.
Beatriz Ramos, HomeFirst vice president of the emergency housing division, said before extreme weather the nonprofit and other organizations meet with the county to coordinate approaches.
"There are more encampments than there are providers, and there are counties, and there are advocates and there are volunteers and so what we do is we try our hardest to leverage every single resource possible to ensure that we're not duplicating efforts," she told San Jose Spotlight.
Last weekend, Ramos said the nonprofit's team made more than 88 contacts with encampments, targeting older adults and individuals with health problems. They passed out ice-cold water bottles, informed unhoused residents about cooling centers and the VTA program and offered free rides to centers in its fleet of cars.
Shana Kurlan, program manager of emergency services at the Office of Supportive Housing, said since July 9 the outreach teams have passed out roughly 7,500 water bottles. That's less than one water bottle per the nearly 10,000 unhoused people in the county, but Kurlan said the county tries to reach as many people as it can and added the county and its service providers aren't the only groups passing out water.
Kurlan said the county takes these issues seriously and the more resources, the better.
"I hope that we don't need another death for it to be an eye opener to people that just how dangerous the heat is," she told San Jose Spotlight.
Lack of resources
But the reach isn't wide enough.
Alexander Abraha, an unhoused San Jose resident for 11 years, said while he has been given free water and food by a nearby church, he wasn't told about the VTA program or offered a ride to a cooling center. He has diabetes and has been hospitalized due to heat.
"I got tired. My body cannot take the outside," he told San Jose Spotlight.
To get to a cooling center, Abraha, 56, would have to walk roughly 30 minutes -- too far for him due to his health problems.
Homelessness advocate Scott Largent said distance is often an issue for the unhoused community, especially when they have to leave their camps for resources. He said he was surprised there was no cooling center near San Jose Mineta International Airport where a large encampment exists.
"Normally during heat waves, these centers are too far for most people to leave their camps... so we go to them with water, ice (and) other supplies," he told San Jose Spotlight.
The West Valley
In the West Valley, small communities such as Campbell and Los Gatos struggle with limited to no services for their homeless residents.
The Campbell Community Center serves as the city's cooling center. City Manager Brian Loventhal said while police inform unhoused residents of resources when they see them, there is no city team going to encampments. The city informs residents using social media, its website and a digital board outside the community center and is in the process of hiring an unhoused coordinator to help with outreach.
Los Gatos uses its library as a cooling center from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the Jewish community center opened during the height of the heat last week. But the town has cut back some of its programs, choosing to limit its hotel service to provide a hotel room for unhoused residents only during cold and rainy weather and bad air quality this year. Mason would have used the hotel program during the heat.
Los Gatos Councilmember Rob Moore advocated for the hotel program to be for both heat and cold, but said the town has limited funding and political will.
"I think we need to be honest with ourselves, that if we claim to care about our homeless neighbors, we need to be okay with and interested in finding places for them to call home and finding places where they can lay their heads down at night in a bed," he told San Jose Spotlight.
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