Wearing trendy blue jeans and a smart floral print top, Diana Clinton, 54, looks every inch the urban professional as she taps away on a laptop in the office of the Gilroy Compassion Center on Monterey Road. The only hint she may be a client is the deeply tanned skin she’s earned living outside in Gilroy for almost five years – the low point in a steady quality-of-life decline since she was laid off from IBM in 1988.
Clinton’s soft brown eyes seem incongruous in her lined face, but they come alive when she talks about the possibility of finally having a real place to call home.
The San Martin native has been a regular at the Compassion Center – a grassroots nonprofit organization that offers outreach and social services to the homeless – for a year. She spends her time at the center looking for apartments and preparing to re-enter the workforce. Until then, she and her boyfriend sleep in a tent alongside a creek behind a local church. They’ve been left alone by police officers in that location for about three months, but memories of being ushered out by local authorities and constantly searching for somewhere to bed down are fresh in her mind.
“It’s a sad, scary, horrible life out here,” Clinton said.
Her story is one of hundreds steadily coalescing into a serious issue for Gilroy, according to Police Chief Denise Turner. The chief first detailed the burgeoning dilemma in August 2010, when she presented to City Council her original status report on Gilroy’s homeless population. In the intervening three years, increasing numbers of Santa Clara’s transient population have arrived in the Garlic Capital, exhausting resources from federal, state and county budgets according to Turner.
In 2009, GPD responded to around 700 calls – 251 of which were for being drunk in public – for transient issues at an estimated cost of $240,000.
Now, GPD is “monopolized” by a yearly average of 2,350 calls, according to Turner. Crimes involving transients range from urinating in public to assault, said GPD Sgt. Pedro Espinoza.
Addressing the city’s homeless problem “is such a complex issue,” Turner acknowledged. “We have to understand the root causes of the problem.”
While hailing Gilroy for its strong philanthropic and humanitarian spirit, the chief says something has to change. She’s looking for a solution and is clear about some ideas that could be floated, including a legal encampment.
In the upcoming regular City Council meeting on June 17, Turner will present an updated version of the homeless report that reflects how resources are being stretched citywide. She wants the Council to take action.
“What’s our overall tolerance?” Turner said. “What is the policy direction going to be?”
Whichever stance the City takes – will Gilroy become a benevolent service center hub for the homeless or will it roll up the welcome mat and direct people back to San Jose or Monterey – GPD wants to free up countless man hours and funds spent tackling transient issues.
Mayor Don Gage says he’s looking forward to the chief’s presentation.
“I’m open to anything because I don’t see a solution to the problem,” Gage reasoned.
The right way would be to build permanent housing, Gage explained, but the City doesn’t have “$20 million lying around.”
One example Turner offers up is studying the model set forth by a successfully implemented legal encampment, or “tent city” as it is otherwise known in Placerville in El Dorado County, east of Sacramento.
Opened in July 2012, Placerville’s “Hangtown Haven” offers a safe, legal campground – the only one of its kind in California – for the city’s homeless.
Sitting on donated land, funding is raised for the encampment by a nonprofit called Hangtown Haven Inc., according to City of Placerville Finance Director Dave Warren. Placerville incurs no direct costs as a result of the arrangement, he explained.
Complete with fire pits, portable toilets and wash stations, there are 30 tents pitched and between 40 to 50 people stay there every night according to Placerville City Manager Cleve Morris. He says the net effect of the encampment has been positive, but issues remain, particularly with “problem” transients.
Still, the facility “has helped meet the problem of illegal camps,” Morris explained. “We could tell them, ‘you can’t camp here, but here’s where you can go.’”
Hangtown Haven isn’t a revolving door for just anyone, either.
At one point, the Haven got a reputation as the place to go among Sacramento’s transients – mirroring Gilroy’s relationship with San Jose – but the city stemmed the tide by enforcing strict rules, Morris noted.
No drugs, alcohol or sex offenders are allowed inside the camp and clients have to prove that they are, or were within the last six months, a resident of Placerville. Transients who don’t qualify are told there is no place for them in Placerville and asked to move on, said Morris, who underscored the encampment’s “very strict check-in policy.”
Whether the compassion already shown by Gilroyans extends to creating legal encampments remains to be seen, but Councilman Peter Leroe-Muñoz is impressed that GPD is offering new solutions.
“I appreciate that law enforcement are brainstorming ideas that are outside the box,” he said.
Innovative problem solving aside, Leroe-Muñoz sees a host of challenges on the horizon in getting an encampment off the ground.
“There’s the question of making sure it would be safe for both local residents and transients,” he reasoned. “I can also see health, heat and plumbing issues.”
Still, the councilman thinks that if any city can figure out a creative way around a sensitive problem, it’s Gilroy.
“It’s a compassionate city,” he asserted. “We have resources and we need to make sure they’re integrated.”
Jan Bernstein-Chargin is one local player at the epicenter of the ongoing battle to weave funds, services and volunteers together to create a local safety net She is a facilitator on Gilroy’s Homeless Task Force, chair of Gilroy’s Housing Advisory Committee and board chair at the Gilroy Compassion Center. Bernstein-Chargin doesn’t want the upcoming dialogue and policy direction decision to turn into a political hot potato.
It’s not a left or right issue, Bernstein-Chargin explained: it just comes down to the best way to get people back on their feet again.
“What are the solutions?” she said, cutting to the heart of the issue.
In addition to the “legal encampment” idea, Bernstein-Chargin would like the Council to consider a “safe parking” program that enables homeless people to sleep in their cars without running foul of the law.
“People would know where they are allowed to be,” she pointed out.
It is illegal to live in a car in the city – a reality that frequently leads to tickets, court dates and sometimes people disappearing into the judicial system, losing their jobs in the process, Bernstein-Chargin elaborated.
Still, she concedes this is only a small part of a much bigger problem.
“The long-term solution is safe and appropriate housing for all income levels,” she noted. “What can you rent when you earn less than $1,000 a month?”
Executive Director David Cox, of St. Joseph’s Family Center – a local nonprofit that provides a wide array of services to individuals and families in need – echoes Bernstein-Chargin’s sentiments, and then some.
“If we keep doing the same thing, then nothing is going to get better,” he reasoned. “What’s a humane and dignified response to this problem?”
Cox notes that if Council agrees to take a closer look at “legal encampments” or a “safe parking” program, then everything must be transparent to the community at large.
“This is going to be temporary, but there might still be fears,” he added.
Keeping the conversation going and humanizing the plight of homeless and transient people, Cox explained, is key to getting the point across that homelessness isn’t a crime and there are lives at stake.
“One of the most preyed upon populations is the homeless,” Cox said. “They don’t have layers of protection.”
