City and county officials cleared out a homeless encampment Oct. 3, effectively evicting a family who says they have no other place to go. A 100-bed emergency shelter operates between December and March in Gilroy, but the Garlic Capital has no year-round overnight shelter.
Diana Clinton, 55, has been homeless since 2007 and she’s no stranger to being displaced for camping in the hidden areas of the city, she said. Clinton, her husband, her 24-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend lived in a mishmash of tents, wedged between trees in an undeveloped lot near the Santa Clara County Social Services building and Community Solutions.
When police arrived in the morning, they were told to clear out. After Clinton and her family gathered what they could, city and county workers dismantled the encampment.
“My daughter just couldn’t understand it. She kept saying ‘where do we go,’” Clinton said. “We’re not here by choice. I wish we had one option. If we had a safe and legal place to sleep at night then we could be focus and be on our way so much faster than having to move every few weeks.”
Police notified the camp’s residents they were lodging there illegally on Sept. 24, Clinton said.
A majority of the county’s homeless population—705 of the 1,065 surveyed last year during a “point in time” count on Jan. 29 and 30—live on the street, in a car, in an abandoned building or in an encampment. The city alone cleared 47 encampments in 2013, according to city records.
“The current course of action is not only expensive, it is completely ineffective in reducing homelessness—and actually keeps some people homeless longer than they otherwise would be,” said Jan Bernstein-Chargin, board chair of the Compassion Center, which provides daytime outreach to the area’s needy. “When you add up the costs to the taxpayers of citing, ticketing, prosecuting, doing clean-ups, hauling people’s belongings to the dump, the staff costs of police officers, water district workers, courts, probation, jails, etc. we could save money by redirecting these resources into actual solutions.”
Compassion Center clients reported that other encampments were torn down Oct. 3, Bernstein-Chargin said.
For many homeless, life can be an uncomfortable waiting game. Waiting lists to get into affordable housing programs are literally backed up for years, and on the other hand, others say it’s a “cat-and-mouse game” with local police.
In northern parts of the county, the homeless situation continues to worsen. A 125-bed emergency winter shelter in Sunnyvale was demolished this summer and officials in San Jose are clearing out what was one of the largest homeless encampments in the country.
Clinton suggested the city set aside a plot of land where local homeless can set up tents and camp until they move to transitional housing.
“We’ll pay for the garbage. We’ll pay for the port-o-potties. Just give us a safe and legal place to sleep at night and we’ll show you we can move forward in a positive way,” she said. “The problem is not going to go away. Just give us one year. We have zero options out here. We have nowhere to go.”
Clinton, who said she’s attending computer classes at Gavilan College with hopes of one day becoming a webmaster, says maintaining some semblance of hope is critical to surviving.
“You never know how long you’re going to be waiting,” she said. “You’ve got to get up and dust yourself off and keep going. And we’ll keep going. Family unity is the most valuable thing on the planet. We’ll always have each other.”
