Testimony from the May 22nd, 2025 Sweep Along the Guadalupe River in San Jose, CA

Editor's Note: With the new 2025-2026 budget including such policies like "Responsibility to Shelter," we watched additional budget allocated to create a new police unit who would have the ability to arrest our houseless neighbors for declining the City-offered shelter for whatever reason. Often in these types of policies, the realities experienced by those on the ground differ from the solutions proposed by elected officials. This short profile highlights someone who has experienced sweeps and provides insight as to the circumstances of those being swept.

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May 22nd, 2025 -- San Jose Police conducted a sweep on houseless encampments along the Guadalupe River in San Jose, CA. They told residents of the encampments that the sweep would take place in June and then suddenly descended on the encampment.

The sweeps are part of an ongoing campaign by Mayor Matt Mahan whose self-proclaimed “innovative” policies on houselessness include the recently proposed Responsibility to Shelter policy, which creates a new police unit to arrest houseless people if they refuse city-offered shelter.

The policy of sweeping encampments -- essentially evicting houseless communities from where they take shelter with limited offers of alternative housing options -- is already the default policy in San Jose for decades. The City of San Jose cited pre-pandemic that each sweep cost an estimated $10,000 per sweep meaning the City of San Jose has spent millions of dollars on this policy over the years of its use.