The Democratic mayor of one of California’s largest cities is pushing to tackle the state’s homeless crisis by enacting weightier consequences for rejecting housing services.
Last month, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan introduced a new policy that would amend the municipal code, allowing authorities to arrest homeless residents on trespassing charges if they refuse housing services three times within an 18-month period. The San Jose city council subsequently passed Mahan’s budget, moving forward with the homelessness proposal last month in a 7-4 vote.
The proposal comes as the city of nearly one million is struggling to handle the fourth-highest homeless population in the U.S., with at least 5,477 homeless residents, according to the San Jose Spotlight. Mahan says his policy would incentivize people to accept shelter, potentially saving lives.
“There’s an extremely vulnerable subset of folks who refuse those options, no matter how nicely designed they are,” the mayor told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday. “That speaks to me of a persistent challenge we face with addiction and mental illness on our streets, and we’ve sort of built a system that biases toward helping those who want help, while turning a blind eye to those who are trapped in a cycle of addiction. And the reality is it’s deadly. We’re sentencing people to die on the streets.”
“I think the appropriate response is to say, you’ve got to, at a minimum, come indoors,” he continued. “Camping can’t be a choice when we’re offering housing. And if you’re so caught in the throes of addiction that you can’t say yes to interim housing or dignified shelter, we need to create accountability.”
California’s homeless population has skyrocketed in recent years, with 180,000 people now documented as homeless. More than a third of America’s entire homeless population is found in the Golden State, where homelessness has risen 53% since 2013, according to state data.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court released a 3-1 decision ruling that targeting homeless encampments on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The decision struck down a San Francisco court’s decision that said imposing criminal penalties on homeless encampments violated the Constitution, allowing states to ban people from sleeping and camping in public areas.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) celebrated the high court’s decision, releasing an order last July directing California officials to start dismantling thousands of homeless encampments around the Golden State. The order has placed a heavier burden on cities like Mahan’s San Jose to reduce homelessness, although other encampment hotspots, such as Los Angeles, have pushed back on the directive.
The governor has spent billions on the homeless crisis, although he has faced heightened scrutiny over where the funding has gone and how effective it has been in solving the problem.
In April 2024, a state audit revealed the Newsom administration failed to track more than $24 billion in taxpayer funds aimed at homelessness.
The California Interagency Council on Homelessness, the state agency that oversees homelessness, did not provide “accurate, complete, and comparable financial and outcome information from homelessness programs,” auditors reported.
That fall, Newsom faced further outrage from Republican state lawmakers after he vetoed two bills designed to increase oversight and accountability for state funding for homelessness programs.
NEWSOM REJECTS OVERSIGHT BILLS FOR HOMELESSNESS SPENDING AFTER STATE LOST TRACK OF BILLIONS
On Wednesday, Mahan said that tackling homelessness is not a “partisan issue.” But he warned that the state’s approach thus far to the crisis has failed to meet the need of the hour.
“I’m just interested in figuring out what works,” he said. “And clearly, what we’re doing on homelessness in California is not working. We’re about… nearly half of the nation’s unsheltered population, so the status quo is failing, and the sooner we acknowledge that the status quo on homelessness in California is failing, the sooner we will embrace solutions that work to get people indoors and connected to services.”