(INSIDE CALIFORNIA POLITICS) — This week on Inside California Politics, host Nikki Laurenzo is on the road to speak with San José Mayor Matt Mahan about his city’s approach to homelessness and what he’s looking for from current and future state leaders.
Mahan, former Bay Area tech executive, cited quicker, temporary housing solutions as key to his strategy to lowering the number of unsheltered homeless people.
“I think what’s work is we’ve combined a compassionate approach with accountability and our solutions are cost effective,” Mahan said. “We’re building modular units, we’re converting hotels, safe parking, safe sleeping, we are creating safe dignified private alternatives to the streets and when they’re available we’re creating strong incentive for people to accept that shelter, come indoors and get connected to services.
“In the last few years we’ve created over 20 sites that are interim. These are cost effective. We can build these units or buy them on the order of $100,000 a unit, not wait 6 years to build a new apartment building that costs $1 million a door.”
The mayor said Prop. 36 offers the chance at a middle path between mass incarceration for drug use and allowing the open use of drugs in public.
“We need to implement it. We need beds. I’ve talked to our DA, our judges,” Mahan said. “The biggest barrier— part of its philosophic — but the biggest is we don’t have enough appropriate treatment placements and we have known this for years and Prop. 36 should be the forcing function to say we have a problem.”
“We need appropriate places for people to go to get treatment, And if their addiction is so severe that they are harming the broader community, repeatedly committing crimes, making parks unusable for children because of public drug use or they’re stealing from small businesses and pushing them to the brink and driving up costs for everyone, they ought to be mandated to get treatment.”
Mahan said that state leaders in Sacramento are not supporting the proposition, which voters passed 68.4% to 31.6% in 2024, strongly enough and suggested that voters may need take further initiative.
“People don’t realize — and I think they’re starting to see on the street — that it’s not being implemented,” Mahan said. “But when they find out, if we have to, I think we should go back to the ballot and force implementation. I think the voters knew what they wanted and expected their leaders to follow through. And there’s a huge gap right now between our elected leaders and where the people are at on this and a number of other issues.”
When it comes to the group of candidates running to be the state’s next governor Mahan has so far declined to make a public endorsement.
“I’m looking for that convincing message…” Mahan said. “It doesn’t matter to me what the endorsements are or the kind of the brand around it. I want to hear specifically on those issues what will you do differently because we have not been getting the partnership we need from Sacramento in recent years.”
Mahan did not rule out running for the state’s chief executive position himself but said it would be a “last resort.”
“I have not ruled it out. I ran for this job to run San Jose and deliver those great outcomes for our residents. My wife and I are raising two little kids here. We’re very rooted here. I want San Jose to be as successful as it can be,” Mahan said. “I would say at least in this cycle, jumping into this race would be a last resort if I don’t hear from anybody that they’ve got a clear and compelling vision for change and that they’re going to partner with us at the local level to deliver those outcomes we’ve been talking about.”
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