Santa Clara County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to officially loop the city of San Jose into the county's housing and health services system — potentially bridging an aid gap for hundreds of homeless residents isolated in the city’s shelter system.
Direct medical and behavioral health services to city of San Jose-funded interim housing sites will “expand” under a new partnership brokered by Supervisor Betty Duong and Mayor Matt Mahan last week.
County Executive James Williams today told supervisors the agreement will increase inpatient and residential behavioral health capacity across the county. Duong said the agreement will seek to increase capacity for housing referrals and facilitate the expansion of placement in supportive housing by bringing most of San Jose’s temporary housing sites into the County Coordinated Entry System.
Mahan’s support meant that the county’s vote to approve the agreement will solidify its partnership with the city — the elected officials affirmed Friday.
"This is a new chapter for our work in the forefront Santa Clara County has led for many years," Duong said Tuesday. "[Supervisor Susan] Ellenberg, I hate to put you on the spot, [but] I'm turning to you as the lead driving force behind our behavioral health board — I'd be honored to have your second on this motion."
With neighboring cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View already benefiting from the County Office of Supportive Housing’s Continuum of Care, Ellenberg said she had wanted San Jose to join them for a long time.
“Being able to integrate city shelters into the county coordinated system is really going to allow for greater efficiencies, less duplication of effort, and hopefully more successful stories of people exiting homelessness and achieving long term stability,” she said Tuesday.
The newfound effort comes after San Jose Inside reported Duong’s presence at a homeless encampment sweep of former Columbus Park RV residents Thursday.
She and Mahan announced the partnership during a news conference less than 24 hours after city officials failed to support cereal company Kellanova, which paid for cleaning up an RV homeless encampment – a cost routinely carried out by city contractors on public property.
The agreement affirmed today marks the second initiative in recent months where the city and the county teamed up on a homelessness and public safety-related project. The Downtown Association hosted an Aug. 8 town hall to discuss “public safety challenges and community-focused solutions in Downtown San Jose.”
Downtown Association interim CEO Gumby Marques recounted a story of a presumably homeless mentally ill resident attacking a pregnant colleague leading up to the August town hall.
“We have a commitment to wrapping around our 40 most vulnerable people and we want to look for the services as well as report on the results,” Marques said Tuesday.
As Duong continues to abide by her approach of “wrap-around” services and support, Mahan continues to advocate for the quick build of shelter capacity as well as law enforcement intervention in the most severe cases of homeless residents falling into crime and illness.
“Treatment not tents,” stated Mahan in a Sunday newsletter.
“If the partnership we announced on Friday had existed back when [a homeless resident] moved into the Guadalupe Emergency Interim Housing — if medical and behavioral health care had come directly to him here, if there had been an in-patient treatment bed when what he really needed was detox and medication, and if he had a clearer path into permanent housing … maybe he’d already be in an apartment of his own,” he said. “We’ll never know.”
Williams said the Board of Supervisors will be provided regular progress reports on the results of the county and city’s new partnership.
