Many of the tents lining Coyote Creek in San Jose’s Roosevelt Park have been there for years. The city, under former Mayor Sam Liccardo, once considered creating sanctioned encampments — though it eventually settled on providing inhabitants with basic needs like port-a-potties and trash bins.
Now, Mayor Matt Mahan wants to bring that plan back, especially after seeing San Diego set up two such encampments.
“We had a member of our city staff go down and actually research what they’re doing and take a first hand look,” Mahan said. “They just stood up a site with 400 tents. It looks beautiful. There are nice, neat rows. There’s basic on-site security and sanitation. It’s an alternative to the unsafe, unsanitary, unmanaged encampments we have on the streets.”
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Some South Bay homeless advocates say they’ve supported the idea for many years, as long as it isn’t seen as a permanent solution.
“I think it’s important that the mayor is pushing that harder than anybody else has,” Pastor Scott Wagers said. “And I know he’s got a big plan to get people out of these encampments, which is good, but we’re worried about people getting stuck in the system and not going into permanent housing. But as a short-term interim plan, especially in the cold winter nights, desperately needed.”
Some unhoused people at Roosevelt Park told NBC Bay Area that they think many tent dwellers would agree.
“I think it’s a great idea. We make little communities anywhere. … I bounce around to all of them. I associate with all of them, so I think it’s a great idea,” John Navarez said.
One of the biggest challenges for the plan, according to Mahan, is finding sites.
“We’ll need to do an inventory of potential sites. We need to get buy-in from the council to do a pilot,” Mahan said. “I firmly believe that if we treat this like the crisis that it is, we will move forward a pilot next year. It’s really just a matter of political will.”
Despite those hopes, the time to find the appropriate site along with the cost to keep sleeping sites safe means this project will a long-term one.
Mahan plans to propose the plan in his budget messages in March, which he said means any actual construction would be months later.
