Santa Clara County, the city of San Jose and several other cities and partner organizations announced Thursday that they are submitting more than a dozen proposals to the state for funding to build more than 800 housing units over the next nine months.
The city and county, along with the cities of Santa Clara, Palo Alto and Mountain View, plan to submit proposals for Project Homekey, a program the state launched last year with support from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to convert hotels and motels into interim and permanent housing units for homeless residents and people with severe mental health conditions.
When applications for the next round of Homekey funds open Friday, the local governments and a handful of partner organizations including the Santa Clara County Housing Authority will submit a total of nine proposed housing projects across the four cities.
“To address the housing crisis, we must leverage partnerships and move quickly,” Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Mike Wasserman said in a statement. “No one entity can do this alone - progress is made when we work collaboratively.”
In San Jose, the city and Housing Authority plan to partner with multiple organizations focused on supportive housing and combating homelessness to convert a total of 311 hotel and motel rooms into permanent housing and an additional 61 rooms into interim housing for homeless youth.
In Mountain View, the county and city plan to convert 67 hotel rooms into permanent housing units that also feature supportive services for the complex's future residents.
San Jose, Palo Alto and San Jose also plan to work with the housing and homelessness nonprofit LifeMoves and the Housing Authority to develop 339 emergency interim housing units across the three cities.
“Thanks to our partners, we continue to build on our progress to house even more people with Homekey funds and grow our needed stock of deeply affordable emergency housing for our unhoused neighbors,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
Cities across Santa Clara County received four Homekey awards during the programs' first round of funding awards. Those awards supported the creation of 364 housing units for the county's homeless residents, according to county officials.
Can we find some City and County officials that stand up for Taxpaying residents like
LA Sheriff Villanueva?
“You cannot build your way out of homelessness,” …..LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva said.
“It was the LA Homeless Authority themselves that said
For Every 100 (vagrants) that we house,
they are replaced by 120 (more vagrants) on the street –
the math seems to elude these people … our elected officials.”
Villanueva says his office is going to start ENFORCING the LAW,
citing California Code 26.600.
It states the sheriff “shall preserve peace, and to accomplish this object may sponsor, supervise, or participate in any project of crime prevention, rehabilitation of persons previously convicted of crime, or the suppression of delinquency.”
“You don’t have a right to negatively impact the community and claim public space as your own,”
you people are the easiest marks on planet earth
give billions, get more homeless
why not give more?
you keep saying treat these people like humans, fine, humans with agency have to be responsible for themselves
more money will not help these people get their agency back, it will erode it
We often hear the catechism, “We are all only a single paycheck away from being homeless.”
We are not. To become homeless, a person needs to cascade through many safety nets. In most cases, the homeless person, often because of mental illness, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or just plain antisocial behavior, burns the safety nets himself.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928
If a rational person lost his job or had his hours cutback, here is what he would do:
Apply for unemployment benefits
Seek additional employment
Live off your savings.
Consider adding some debt to your credit cards to make ends meet
Ask your parents for help
Ask your siblings for help
Ask your children for help
Ask your friends for help
Ask your church, synagogue, or mosque for help
Ask for help from any number of government agencies, charities, and NGOs.
Move in with one of your relatives (and help around the house and pay SOME rent)
Move in with one of your friends (and help around the house and pay SOME rent)
Rent a room from someone: craigslist has listing for rooms to rent from as low as $300 per month.
The reason that many people become homeless is because they have “burned their bridges” to the support system that would have been available to them but for their abhorrent and abusive behavior(s). They cannot obtain support from one or more of the above safety nets because they have burned them. There potential support system has been exhausted by them.
I know that at least one of you pedantic progressives is going to mention the exception of an orphan, atheist, who cannot read or write, doesn’t have good credit and no savings, and doesn’t know how to apply for help (even when one of the social service outreach groups contacts him or her). Granted, you could be right, but you are talking about the rare exception – I am talking about the majority of the homeless. We cannot make policy based on the exception. If we put these treatable people into hospital, we would have a manageable number of “economic” homeless. Also, I suspect that if we put people in the hospital for screening and treatment options, there would be more than a few of the homeless who would move away sue sponte.
Virtually every person who is homeless has some form of income, be it unemployment (which they get if they are laid off), Social Security, SDI, general assistance, SNAP, etc., etc. – well, you get the idea. And yet, they never have any money — they cannot seem to find an economic model that will work for them.
We don’t have a housing crisis, we have a mental illness, drug addiction, alcohol dependence, criminal and anti-social behavior crisis. And the only way to fix it is in-patient mental hospitals to treat these people.
We don’t have a housing crisis, we have a “homeless industry” that cynically keeps people in the system.
And, please, don’t even go to “Ronald Reagan did it.” Here is an article from 1984 from the NYT that describes the de-institutionalization, which had been occurring in every state for years before Reagan was even elected governor of CA.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html
Here is my 2-point plan:
1. Take the homeless off the street and put them into a mental hospital for medical and psychiatric evaluation – give them a ten-day evaluation, support and counselling, then
2. After they are evaluated, provide them with the needed services – some/most may need permanent care, others may need some job and housing assistance.
It is a cruel society that allows the mentally ill homeless to die in the streets from overdoses, violence, and exposure. It is a suicidal society that allows is miscreants, anti-socials, and criminals to run amok in our cities.