San Jose Evicts Homeless From Trailers at Happy Hollow

Shaunn Cartwright has a question for San Jose: Why don’t homeless lives matter?

As a member of the Unhoused Response Group, Cartwright said she couldn’t help but wonder as much over the weekend when the city dismantled a 90-trailer encampment at Happy Hollow Zoo that was set up to protect homeless people from catching COVID-19.

The trailers that sit on a parking lot by the zoo were used for 32 days. Prior to that, they had been vacant for nearly two months after the city obtained them from the state as part of a $730,000 contract with Abode Services, which served as the site operator.

“It’s so disheartening when you see something like this get closed when you only tried it for a month,” Cartwright said. “Most of us are in a relationship with someone longer than a month before you break it off.”

San Jose Housing Department spokesman Jeff Scott gave a couple of reasons for the shutdown in an email message to San Jose Inside. He also noted that the city and its partners were able to find hotel rooms for all of the trailer clients.

“Our hope was that we could use the trailers as an innovation housing solution to help address the health challenges facing unhoused residents due to the pandemic,” he explained. “However, we encountered numerous operational issues with the trailers, including costly maintenance and upkeep. And our trailer clients who were older individuals with underlying health conditions, had difficulty navigating stairs at the site and walking to the shower and laundry facilities. After about a month, we came to the conclusion that transitioning our trailer clients into hotel rooms while the shelter-in-place order remains in effect is a better solution for our clients and the city.”

Scott said it cost $1.3 million to refurbish the trailers and make the site usable, and the city is working with FEMA to determine how much it will get reimbursed for the cost.

So, what happens to the trailers now? Scott said they could be kept in storage, returned to the state or repurposed.

Darriel Trotter, who lived in one of the trailers for three weeks, was evicted on Monday after receiving a notice a week ago that the closure was imminent. Despite not being able to retrieve all of his belongings as of Tuesday morning, he said the transition to a hotel in Sunnyvale has been a relatively smooth one. “They transported us [to the hotel] in a SUV,” he said. “The experience living in the trailers was all good.”

The city’s contract with Abode runs through the end of October, but there was a clause to end the deal sooner for a situation like the planned reopening of Happy Hollow.

“It’s my understanding that Happy Hollow will reopen some time in July, and when it was ready to reopen, we agreed we would begin demobilization of the site,” San Jose Deputy Director of Housing Ragan Henninger said.

Cartwright and members of Survivors on the Street (SOS), an advocacy group for the homeless, said a lot of the residents were unaware of the temporary nature of the setup. And contrary to what Scott said, some of the clients ended up returning to the streets after being displaced. “It takes a lot to talk them inside,” Cartwright said. “You can’t toy with them and experiment with them.”

Another bone of contention with the city was what she called “a nearly impossible” task of navigating the phone lines for people trying to get into one of the trailers.

Amanda Cole said Joelle Washington—a fellow SOS member—might still be living today had she been able to get into one of the trailers. “Joelle was at Parkside Shelter and was desperately trying to get into a trailer before she died [on June 5],” Cole said. “She was around 50 years old. It was impossible for her to get into a trailer, and now we know why. It’s because they planned on dismantling them. … She had multiple physical illnesses and was married for 20 years. Losing her really devastated our group.”

Lisa Landry, another member of SOS, expressed frustration that Washington wasn’t able to get into one of the trailers at Happy Hollow.

“She died waiting to get into a trailer,” Landry said. “She died on the floor waiting. In honor of her memory, we will try even harder so another unhoused person doesn’t have to die while waiting to get into housing.”

In response to COVID-19, the city, Santa Clara County and Valley Homeless Healthcare established a departmental operations center, forming a central hotline for individuals seeking shelter. Henninger said the focus was on the elderly—generally ages 65 and up—who have three or more underlying health conditions (categorized as the most vulnerable by the Centers of Disease and Control guidelines). “So the triage system is very much medically focused on sheltering our most medically vulnerable,” she said.

Of the 6,200 homeless people in San Jose, the county has identified at least 2,500 who are at high risk of contracting the virus due to their underlying health conditions.

“The majority of the unhoused are people of color, the same population most vulnerable to COVID-19,” Cartwright said. “Why are so few who are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable being offered adequate shelter?”

9 Comments

  1. > Shaunn Cartwright has a question for San Jose: Why don’t homeless lives matter?

    Is there any way San Jose Inside could subpoena Shaun Cartwright?

    I think a lot of members of the community would like to cross examine her under oath and get some explanations from her about why all the money for the homeless keeps disappearing down a rat hole and the problem never gets any better.

    What does Shaun Cartwright know? Does she benefit from the millions of dollars spent on the homeless industrial complex?

    • Few people have created more homeless than Shuannn Cartwright. I have to give her credit, she can suck all the oxygen out of the City Hall Assembly and can take the credit equivalent to three people for passing all these rent regulations that all but guarantee more homelessness. It is a site to behold.

      If she is getting paid per homeless, definitely buy stock in her company.

  2. “Scott said it cost $1.3 million to refurbish the trailers and make the site usable, and the city is working with FEMA to determine how much it will get reimbursed for the cost.”

    “The trailers that sit on a parking lot by the zoo were used for 32 days.”

    some maths

    $1,300,000 / 32 days = $40625/day.

    $40625 / day for 90 guests, $415/night/guest.

    https://www.priceline.com/relax/in/3000002250/from/20200617/to/20200618/rooms/1?vrid=192f488e3c64749f90b393f1b312f1c4

    Thats 4 rooms at the Fairmont. One room to cook, one room to sleep, one room to go the bathroom, one room to shower.

    Ms. Wadsworth, Mr. Peralez, Ms. Morales-Ferrand – I guess being a landlord is not so easy after all, huh?

    • > “Daring daylight robbery nets perps $1.3 million.

      > Police puzzled. No description of the bandits available.

      > “We don’t think they used a gun”, said one officer.”Everything points to an inside job”

    • Actually, it’s $451/guest/day. Dyscalculia is the math equivalent of dyslexia. Not to worry, though, 4 out of 3 people struggle with math.

      • Speaking of dyslexia, the story calls the company contracted for this fiscal nightmare Abode in one place and Adobe in another.

        • Is this really adding insight? Do you think grammar policing is an argument? I feel you are trying to be funny, and not in a vicious way, I just don’t think its funny, like the way clever is rarely funny. Not offensive, not aggravating, its just awkward when people point out irrelevant mistakes as a joke and I mean awkward toward the one pointing it out.

          I wish you a good weekend.

  3. The Merc provided additional insights. By all appearances, SJ Housing never bothered to inspect the trailers or stipulate their condition in the contract. They discovered upon delivery that many were unsuitable for habitation and required extensive repairs.

    To compound the bungling, it also appears that SJ Housing executed a contract just shy of $3/4 million without bothering to confirm that the Adobe could oversee habitable units.

    All this on top of our massive budget deficit. This is just the latest of numerous SNAFUs at Housing. At what point does City Manager Dave Sykes clean house at the Housing Department?

  4. Tje trailors worked on both Oakland and San Francisco
    The Department of Housing has always been adverse to transition housing. They sabataged Hope Village even though it demonstrated grear sucess with residents
    Sabatage is often depicted as failure
    In fact Marya Esparza stioulated the trailors could only be at Happy Hollow on a temporary basis .
    This was a set up from day one

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *