Responsibility to Shelter Will Lead to Police Violence, Arrests and Incarceration Beyond the Charge Named in the Policy, and Immigration Consequences

Editor's note: Below is a letter submitted to the San Jose City Council before the recent 2025-2026 budget vote that included the "Responsibility to Shelter" policy, a new policy by Mayor Mahan that allows houseless individuals to be arrested for not accepting placements into shelters, allocating more money to an already half-a-billion dollar San Jose Police budget. Read the letter submitted below.

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Illo by Adrian Avila

June 9, 2025 

Mayor Mahan and City Councilmembers,

Responsibility to Shelter Will Lead to Police Violence, Arrests and Incarceration Beyond the Charge Named in the Policy, and Immigration Consequences

Based on how policing, prosecution, and incarceration has operated in San Jose and Santa Clara County, this is what we expect to occur if Matt Mahan’s proposal to create a new police unit to arrest houseless people is passed. Even with the recent clarification on the policy by the mayor, in any city offered service to people in need in San Jose there should not be any room to call police and further exacerbate their situation by incarceration, let alone losing the trust of those you are trying to serve. 

The first, and most significant feature of the policy, is not in the specific use of the trespassing charge that the policy says is the arresting action if someone does not comply. Rather, it is in the escalation of police contact in the first place. The policy funds and orders more police interaction with houseless people, and more specifically, those who they claim have the most severe mental health and substance use issues. It is precisely these community members who have experienced the most violence and at times lethal use of force by San Jose police.

A study on San Jose police use of force conducted by the California Reporting Project and published by the Bay Area New Group, found conclusively that those with mental health needs and intoxication were overwhelmingly the majority of who suffers from police violence. For example, from 2014 to 2021, they found 108 individuals who were seriously injured and killed by San Jose police - 73% of whom had mental health issues or were intoxicated. Of the 25 people killed over the same period, 80% had mental health needs or were intoxicated.

So based on the data, and who the police will be targeting, the Responsibility to Shelter policy will lead to high likelihood of serious, dangerous, and perhaps lethal use of force.

The other likelihood is an expansion of arrests even beyond the scope of “trespassing” - the arrest the policy says will be applied if someone refuses to follow the command to go to the designated place. Police interaction invites a multitude of other arrests - some based on a response to a behavior to the interaction itself. The most common is resisting arrest, and sometimes an elevated “assault on a police officer” even if no assault occurred. Indeed, most of the police use of force incidents are accompanied with arresting the recipient of the violence with these charges. That is why they have been called “cover charges” - meaning arrests to cover or justify the use of force applied. Couple this reality with who the policy is having police approach - those who they say have mental health issues - the scenarios are rife for use of force and cover charges. So an interaction could lead to not only the identified charge of the police - trespassing - but could other charges caused solely by the police interaction itself. The interaction also can lead to arrests based on old warrants, things found on the person, any number of things alleged that can lead to someone being  arrested. Based on these realities, despite claims by the mayor, this policy will absolutely lead to expansion of arrests.

And while the Sheriff and the District Attorney have stated that if someone is brought into the jail, they will not be held or charged - that is still based on the limited assumption of the person coming in for that singular charge - not the multitude of charges that an officer can claim, even if charges are dropped later. And with the passage of Proposition 36, if for example, someone is alleged to have an illegal substance on them when confronted by police, they can now be charged with a felony - which means a much higher likelihood of pretrial jail time, and possibly a future prison commitment.

But even if someone is only arrested and brought into the jail to be booked and released on a stand alone trespassing charge (which seems unlikely given that police will be looking for other charges to place on a person) that still creates irreversible harm. That person is now in the system, even if they are not physically held in jail. That record can impact qualification for services, employment, and ironically even housing. 

For immigrant community members who may get caught into the criminal court system due to Responsibility to Shelter - the outcomes can ultimately lead to deportation. There is an undeniable ratcheting up of ICE detention and deportation. The most targeted immigrants, as declared by ICE spokespeople themselves, are those who have contact with the criminal court system. Even what may seem like a less significant misdemeanor charge can be a deportable offense down the line.

It is through observing the history of how policing, prosecution, incarceration has worked in San Jose, coupled with the current political context that we can project out the tremendous pain the Responsibility to Shelter policy will result in if passed.

Sincerely on behalf of Silicon Valley De-Bug,Raj Jayadev