Hiding Poverty for Imaginary Profits

A Cornerstone of National & International Sporting Events

What makes the impossible task of moving hundreds of unhoused people out of sight suddenly an undertaking worth taking? An imagined bounty – for the idea of prosperity for some – the City of San Jose will spend money without a second thought – even in the face of unprecedented budget deficits. That’s what the city of San Jose is once again doing with Superbowl 60 and the FIFA World Cup coming to the Bay Area in 2026. 

Why does hiding poverty have to be a cornerstone of hosting national and international sporting events?

It’s a playbook we’ve seen before – not just here but across the world in cities who host these kinds of sporting events. They prepare by spending millions they do not have for a temporary wave of visitors even when economists - not paid by host committees - consistently show that cities end up in debt with little long term value to residents.

During the sports ramp up, the City of San Jose also gave the San Jose Sharks a $325 million subsidy deal – a vote decided in just one week – to upgrade the arena. This city is running on delusion and absolutely does not care about how the upgrade is gonna get paid for.

The city’s general fund is frivolously offered - unanimously - while the same council fails time and time again to get behind proposals that could bring more significant and lasting city pride. If we can spend $325 million on a local sports arena and millions more sweeping the unhoused in preparation for these events, why wouldn’t we spend that money to actually eradicate houselessness? 

The current San Jose Mayor is the city’s first Mayor that comes directly from Silicon Valley start ups – we have our nerdy example of a tech bro who has embodied the tech sector’s long held belief that they can run government better than public servants. Matt Mahan has demonstrated since his campaigning who matters and who doesn’t. The decisions he’s made as mayor are informed by his skewed view of the world – of controlling and determining the future of the most vulnerable all in his tech version of efficiency. 

Those of us who remember and still have family who work for tech companies know that what holds value for that industry is the “product” and the imaginary potential, not the people who work to make their riches. We can see the similarities to the sporting preparation – that the allure of a promised profit that will not change the material conditions of anyone living in San Jose is more than enough reason to hide, harm and criminalize real people experiencing homelessness.

For the general audience that sees the Mayor’s soundbite messages of offering people housing and them refusing – sweeping and displacing sounds like a reasonable system of care. It’s far from the truth and could often be a false choice because of what folks may have to leave behind just to move into a temporary shelter. And if they choose to stay in the home they’ve made, then force and violence are used to remove them and even potentially incarcerate them. The cost per sweep is in the double digit thousands of dollars, and the human costs are harder to quantify but communities and lives are further destroyed. Often sweeps lead to more deaths of unhoused individuals.

Mahan’s ties to real estate will never let him see housing as a fundamental human right - and instead of taking on the duty to protect residents, vulnerable individuals are blamed for policy failures. The true failure is the inability to regulate housing in a way that could stabilize struggling families and individuals. This mayor has prioritized the temporary, in his words the “immediate” because the future of San Jose is not his to worry about. The hiding of poverty for out of town communities to come to San Jose for sporting events is representative of Mahan’s priorities – the aesthetic of wealth is more valuable than the quality of life for our city’s most vulnerable.

The culture of Silicon Valley – of San Jose needs to shift to prioritize valuing people and families – and that can only happen outside a system of exploitation. The sporting events coming to the Bay are exploitative and extractive even when the marketing says the opposite. Our communities here will be left with the after effects of the sweeps, the budget cuts to things the mayor is not willing to protect, and cases stemming from increased policing that falls disproportionately on communities of color.

The Super Bowl and FIFA coincide with the months the city makes critical decisions around the budget. In February deciding priorities for the year and in June adopting the year's budget. The lead up to and the events outside are the same contradiction SV has lived for years – an image of exuberance, abundance, wealth – while the majority are reaching for limited dollars that don’t go far enough into permanence. Our city budget is better spent keeping people housed with stabilizing strategies like housing preservation to keep the diversity of our neighborhoods, funding preventative and mental health services. Our entire local community should be resourced and valued all the time, not just signaled to when we need to appear to be good hosts is what a world class city that San Jose continually aspires to be would do.