What's It Like To Be Homeless in Mahan's San Jose?

Editor's Note: For five years, Deborah and her disabled son struggled to find secure housing here in San Jose after a divorce, car accident and job loss uprooted their lives. They lived out of their car in a church-run safe parking program before moving to a permanent supportive housing program which was mismanaged and did not offer reliable security. 

Mayor Mahan and the City of San Jose are attempting to clean up the city’s image by boasting how they have “solved” the homelessness crisis which translates to the removal of houseless people from public view mostly through sweeps and law enforcement while providing some temporary housing solutions like tiny homes or motels. These solutions not only are insufficient in getting the majority of people housed but are poorly run and are effectively temporary solutions where residents don’t have the security of long-term housing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nicIKLADaqY

My name is Deborah T. and I was homeless for five years in San Jose, living in my car with my son after a divorce, a car accident and losing my business. I couldn't work because I was taking care of a disabled child and we found ourselves living in the car after paring down, paring down and paring down. We got into a safe parking program, which was very good actually. It was not run by the city. It was run by nonprofit churches who were wonderful people just trying to give back to their community. It was really wonderful, but it had its limitations. It's still very difficult for people in safe parking to have jobs that cause them to come in and out at different times. The one I was in, you had to be there in the evening, between 8-9pm and out of there by 7am. 

Getting into Permanent Supportive Housing

After the safe parking program, we did get into permanent supportive housing, because my son and I both have disabilities. So we did qualify for that. We understood we were going to be going into a program type environment that was not necessarily like a residential program. It has an element to it, with case managers who can help you get the resources that you need. We had already received our disability income at that time, but it was very low, and wasn't enough to pay for an apartment, even with the two of us together without a housing voucher. Being in the permanent supportive housing program turned out to be much different than what I understood it to be or how it was represented to me. The programming there was very scant. What they really needed was AA/NA meetings, more health and wellness type of programs. 

John Stewart was the property management company there. They let the building go downhill. They let people do whatever they wanted. There were needles on the ground. There was death, so many overdoses. Violence, there was stalking. I was stalked by someone with schizophrenia, who I don't fault her for. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and drug addiction. They didn't help me at all. I had to go and get a restraining order, which is something I didn't want to do against my neighbor. They pitted people, residents, against each other. They told me to call the police on my next door neighbor and report that he had a warrant, because I was smelling drugs coming through the outlets in my apartment. We were being exposed to second hand meth, second hand smoke. Constant obstacles. More obstacles there than in our car. In the car, we could drive away, we could get away from people who were picking on us. They were bullying my son. My son developed epilepsy while we were there. Our health declined. We didn't feel safe there, mostly because there was a kind of lawlessness everywhere. People just did what they wanted, and it was just like being left in an unmanaged environment, really. 

And again, I don't blame anybody that was living there for those behaviors. There were people living there with severe mental health issues that were not being addressed. Hyper sexual and making sexual advances towards people. There was rape there, violence and nothing was being done about it. We had code enforcement come out and look at the building because it had roaches, and they didn't see any “live roaches” that day, so they didn't write anything up, even though there was garbage everywhere and nothing was being cleaned.

During COVID, they refused to require people to wear masks, even staff didn't wear them. They were coming into our apartment, my son and I are both immunocompromised. They just did whatever they wanted, and they didn't care about us. They didn't care about our well being. I don't really know why they would take a job there doing that if they didn't want to help people, it didn't make any sense. It was extremely traumatizing to accept help and then end up in a situation like that. And now I do feel like I'm recovering, but it's taken a lot of time to recover from permanent support housing.

A false narrative about people who are unhoused

Not everyone has mental illness and addiction. Those are the folks that are most visible with the most severe problems. Those people are not doing anything wrong. They have mental health issues. They have addiction issues, and sometimes both. There's nothing illegal about that. What's illegal is that we have people in authority putting drugs out there for people to use on the street or in emergency housing. Yeah, we have to just help one another in our communities, other than fault one another for the problems that people have. 

There’s a false narrative about people who are unhoused. That they're all on drugs or mentally ill and that is not the case. I'm a former teacher. My son was a really good student. He's a very creative photographer. We're good people. And most of my neighbors there were good people, the people who had mental illness and addiction, even one of them who stalked me and attacked me, also a very good person, a very sweet person, I can see the child in her. We have to stop villainizing each other and take care of each other, and that's how we fix it, just by being a community and working for the good of everyone. 

Matt Mahan is not doing that. Matt Mahan is working for the interest of the billionaires who want to use people as slaves. Indentured servitude is what we're experiencing right now, because what we get does not pay for our living expenses. He doesn't have the interest of the people in mind, and I saw that in the Columbus Park sweep where he didn't offer people housing. He lied about offering people housing. He separated people who were close to one another. He made it to where saying no to housing three times is criminalized. The offers are unreasonable. Rapid rehousing could only offer help for two years. My son and I were fully disabled, receiving disability, and could not work. We said no to that. 

Another time, they offered us shelter at Little Orchard, which was run like a prison. When we were there, they yelled at everyone, ‘Lunch is ready. Don't sit there. Do this. Do that.’ My nervous system is already fragile from being homeless and trying to figure out how we're going to live and survive. And people are just screaming at us nonsensically.

The RV buy back program was not an option either. You sell your RV to the city and they put you in a temporary hotel stay. As soon as that's over, there's still no housing that's affordable for us on our disability income. Then we would be out on the street without an RV. And that's what's happening to people with his RV buyback program. He doesn't care, he doesn't care about people.

Community is what works

Some of the things I think will work for people coming out of homelessness is talking to the individual about how they became homeless, and backtracking or moving them forward to where did things go astray, and what are those pain points where we can go back and fix something or create something new, or help them build a future. When I say that, I don't mean like they have to get a job and they have to do this. It could be for someone who's completely disabled and is unable to work and can't get out of bed every day. What is their future for that individual? And how do we help that person? Rather than let's take everybody on the outskirts of town where we can't see them anymore, and just forget about them. Have really scant services and very little support and remove them from our greater community. Segregating them, building walls around Emergency Interim Housing (EIH). If you see an EIH, it normally has a wall around it, like totally separating people who need their community. These are the people that need everyone the most. 

There are people here who have severe disabilities, who are very involved in the community, who people care about and love, and their neighbors check on them, and we ask each other, “Have you seen so and so?” “I haven't seen them for a few days. You know what's going on?” We are really working hard at building community here, and that's what works. You have to have a reason to want help, and if that help is pushing you around town and taking your survival gear, those are not the people you want to help you. So when they ask you, do you want this, these services, you're gonna say no, because I don't want you helping me. You're not doing me any favors, you've already hurt me a lot. So why would I take help from you? It doesn't make sense.

San Jose is Funding Recidivism

We are funding recidivism. People who are experiencing homelessness have these options for temporary help that don't lead to permanent solutions, and when that doesn't lead to permanent solutions, they go right back into homelessness, and it's this over and over and over again.

"Emergency interim housing developments are not meant for permanent housing. So not only are they going to become dilapidated and unmanaged or poorly managed, they're also going to be falling apart because they're not built for permanency. We've spent so much money on temporary solutions. We could have put this money into something more permanent that people could live in for a long time and into services that help treat mental health issues and addiction."

And if we continue to fund recidivism, we're going to run out of money doing that over and over and over again. So we have to make wages where people can pay their rent. We have to make rent that wages can cover. If we don't do that, it's so simple. It's math. If you don't do that, no one is going to be living anywhere that they can afford. And I don't know whose goal that is exactly other than the MAGA agenda, Trump and Matt Mahan, but we have to stop it.