City officials and nonprofit leaders are concerned Gilroy could see an influx in homeless individuals with no place to go as a result of recent developments in the northern part of Santa Clara County.
This summer, Sunnyvale’s 125-bed emergency winter shelter was demolished and county officials have not yet found a replacement, despite dedicating $1.2 million to the search. On top of that, officials in San Jose are currently clearing out one of the largest homeless encampments in the country—a 75-acre forest area dubbed “the Jungle.”
“I can’t see any way this is not going to impact Gilroy,” said Jan Bernstein-Chargin, board chair for the Compassion Center—a local nonprofit that provides daytime outreach services to the needy.
The 2013 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey, the most recent countywide effort to track the population, revealed that 7,631 county residents are homeless on any given night and 74 percent of those homeless are out in the cold, living on the streets, in cars or in encampments. The 2013 “point in time count” found approximately 400 Gilroyans without shelter.
Close to four out of every 1,000 Santa Clara County residents are homeless, the most recent estimates show. But since the last survey was conducted in 2011, the number of homeless individuals in the county also increased by 8 percent, with an 18 percent jump in San Jose.
Urban areas like San Jose and Sunnyvale have greater concentrations of transients, and they often travel down to South County because the shelters in North County are typically full, according to Gilroy Police Department Chief Denise Turner.
“I think we’re going to see some of those folks being displaced and coming here because they hear Gilroy is a nice place to come,” she added. “I worry that we’re going to inherit even more people than we can handle. And that makes me nervous.”
Gilroy has a 100-bed homeless shelter open four months a year during the winter called the National Guard Armory—operated by San Jose-based nonprofit HomeFirst. HomeFirst provides showers, hot meals and a safe place to sleep for thousands countywide between December and March, but there is no overnight shelter open year-round in the Garlic Capital.
The ultimate goal of many nonprofits and agencies dedicated to providing to the needy is to find them housing, Bernstein-Chargin said, but time is ticking until winter. Last year, four homeless men froze to death in Santa Clara County during a cold snap—all in San Jose.
To combat this, local organizations are collecting cold weather gear, from blankets to close-toed shoes, to distribute to the needy. But as more homeless across the county become displaced, local organizations and agencies are concerned their resources will be stretched to the limit.
Turner said Gilroy has a reputation across the county as a welcoming community, full of organizations like the Compassion Center, St. Joseph’s Family Center, Salvation Army, churches that provide meals, clothing and other essentials. And it’s not just nonprofits that expect to feel the pain.
“We’ve heard there are vans that drop them off and police departments dropping them off here,” Turner said. “They come to Gilroy but we don’t have enough resources to deal with our own homeless population. When we get an influx from people outside the area or outside the state, it puts a burden on our community and we see the impacts.”
When residents see a swelling homeless population on the streets, in public parks and other places, they often turn to the police to deal with them. As it is now, the police department is understaffed, according to Turner.
“We already have a lot of calls for service, so I get nervous about having even more of a population here when we don’t have the services to take care of them,” she added. “ I think it overwhelms our resources with all the out-of-towners coming in and they’re the ones that generally cause us more problems.”
Bernstein-Chargin said the Compassion Center would often refer homeless individuals with pets to the Sunnyvale Armory in the past, since Gilroy’s Armory does not allow dogs.
“Dogs are, for some people, what keeps them going; that’s their family,” she said. “If we have another cold winter, things could get bad.”
HomeFirst, the agency responsible for operating the Gilroy Armory in the winter and other overnight shelters in Santa Clara County—including the now torn-down Sunnyvale Armory— has brought in, this year, roughly 275 people in from the cold each night since December 2013. The organization, formerly known as EHC LifeBuilders, operated the Sunnyvale Armory for 25 years and recently changed its name to reflect the No. 1 need to address homelessness: more housing.
“The program was there for homeless individuals who had nowhere else to turn, particularly in the beginning of winter when we were facing freezing cold temperatures,” HomeFirst CEO Jenny Niklaus said. “Cold weather shelters can save lives, but the reality is we have to do more to get people into permanent housing.”
“The low-income housing crisis is what we really need to be focusing on at every level,” Bernstein-Chargin said. “Plenty of people are on waiting lists, but where do you go to wait?”
