{"id":488748,"date":"2026-10-08T03:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488748\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T03:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:16:08","slug":"san-jose-has-seen-some-success-with-homelessness-can-san-diego-learn-from-it-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488748\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose has seen some success with homelessness. Can San Diego learn from it? \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told attendees at the third annual End Homelessness Summit<\/a> that his city would build around 1,000 temporary units and get at least 50% of its homeless population housed.<\/p>\n

At the fourth annual End Homelessness Summit held Wednesday at the Carlsbad City Library, Mahan said that in the past 18 months, San Jose reduced the number of people living outdoors by 32% and moved 1,700 people inside.<\/p>\n

While short of their goal \u2014 San Jose still has about 3,700 people living outdoors \u2014 Mahan believes the second- and third-largest cities in California can learn from each other.<\/p>\n

The mayor said he\u2019d be back to the area in two weeks to meet with city and county officials to learn how San Diego County is getting more people into treatment than Santa Clara County.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to getting people into detox and treatment programs, I think we have a lot to learn from San Diego,\u201d Mahan said. \u201cThough, I think we would all acknowledge there simply is not enough capacity today, whether it\u2019s San Diego, San Jose or anywhere else in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

The summit was created and hosted by Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, whose district stretches mostly along the coast from Mission Bay to Mission Viejo. Elected in 2022, Blakespear is running for a second term this year against Republican challenger Laura Bassett.<\/p>\n

Blakespear had her own things to tout, which includes securing $3 million in state funds for Oceanside to build tiny homes, $8 million for the Buena Creek Navigation Center in Vista and a little more than $1.6 million for a landlord incentive program in San Diego County.<\/p>\n

However, Blakespear noted she was not able to get some things through the Legislature that she felt would help the issue. One was Senate Bill 967, which would have promoted increasing interim housing, and another was Senate Bill 866, which would have created more consistent data on statewide funding for homelessness and housing efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know communities are investing millions of dollars, but we don\u2019t have consistent information,\u201d Blakespear said.<\/p>\n

But Mahan said that at least at the local level in San Jose, having more consistent data and increasing interim housing were among the reasons his city was able to decrease the number of people living on the streets so quickly.<\/p>\n

The mayor said their success was because it built out a 2,200-bed shelter system of private units, established no-camping zones around these projects, increased transitions from those units into permanent housing and increased enforcement and outreach using law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Mahan said people are ending up in permanent housing at a rate more than double that of those who are in congregate, or group, shelters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think San Jose has to offer San Diego and the rest of the state is a model of prevention, interim housing that is cost-effective and scalable, and law enforcement that includes enforcing no-encampment zones in sensitive public spaces,\u201d said Mahan. \u201cThat together is leading to a very significant reduction in unsheltered homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahan said the city also created its own data processing system that can provide weekly, or sometimes daily, updates from multiple different sources. He added this helps make more informed decisions as opposed to waiting for data from their annual point-in-time count.<\/p>\n

Both Mahan and Blakespear acknowledged the role behavioral health and addiction play in contributing to homelessness. Another barrier both are trying to address is those who refuse services.<\/p>\n

Blakespear said nearly half of homeless Californians have mental health or substance use disorders. She added that both housing and treatment should not be treated as separate issues and should be combined in order to be more effective.<\/p>\n

However, another speaker, UC San Diego psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Meyer, said this could be quite difficult. Meyer said those seeking or forced to receive psychiatric care fall into a loop he called \u201csystemic neglect:\u201d they get referred for care, fail to receive treatment and then return to the streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve built a system that often requires a very sick person to navigate the system \u2014 make an appointment, get to a clinic, complete an assessment, accept possibly a referral and successfully connect with another provider,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n

Meyer proposed an increase in mobile mental health clinics. He also suggested that if someone who has had three\u00a0 psychiatric holds or two hospitalizations within a year, it should trigger a clinical review instead of automatic involuntary treatment.<\/p>\n

Other guest speakers at the event included Orange County Director of Care Coordination Doug Becht, DignityMoves founder Elizabeth Funk and Interfaith Community Services CEO Greg Anglea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year ago, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told attendees at the third annual End Homelessness Summit that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[7,1570,181,23,205,100,3054,13,84,88,90,89,1696],"class_list":["post-488748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-california","tag-health","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-north-county","tag-politics","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}