Nearly two weeks after San Jose began dismantling its largest homeless encampment, the city is set to open its first-ever safe sleeping site, which will provide tents for dozens of the approximately 370 residents who have lived in dilapidated RVs and squalor at Columbus Park.
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San Jose begins clearing its largest homeless camp, displacing more than 300 people at Columbus Park
Drawing inspiration from larger safe sleeping sites in San Diego, the Taylor Street Navigation Center will serve as a temporary housing location, offering 56 tents, regular trash pickup, three meals per day, mobile showers and access to counseling and support services that the city hopes will allow homeless residents to find a more stable and safe living situation.
“We know this isn’t the perfect solution,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said at a press conference held Friday at the center, located at 1157 E. Taylor St. “It’s definitely not a permanent solution, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the status quo for our communities, for our environment and for the people currently living in unmanaged conditions without access to even running water. This site will act as a navigation center, a first stop, a safe place to stabilize access services and be moved up to the next step in one of our interim housing sites.”
Although the city had previously cleared Columbus Park, RVs and encampments returned and overran the public space. City officials cited public safety issues and a desire to return the once-public amenity to its intended purpose as the driving force behind the more aggressive push to clear the site this time around. During the first week of the abatement, the city reported removing over 120,000 pounds of trash.
Ultimately, the city plans to move forward with a revitalization project in early 2026 that will fill a large section of the park with soccer fields, horseshoe pits and pickleball, futsal, and basketball courts.
While the process of dismantling the encampment at Columbus Park will take several weeks to complete, the city is in the process of opening enough shelter spaces for every resident at the park who wants them, through the conversion of a handful of hotels and motels and the establishment of a new safe sleeping site.
Between the five hotels and motels the city plans to use and the Taylor Street site, it will add 390 new shelter spaces over the next few weeks. Although not every space is open yet, the city has committed to not displacing residents from Columbus Park if they have accepted its offer of shelter. As of Monday, 238 of the 370 residents had agreed to come indoors, including 72 signing up for the city’s RV buyback program.
Housing officials reported earlier this week that it had already relocated 47 people living at the park as a result of opening a combined 79 units at the Casa Linda and Bristol Hotel. Mahan added that the city would also be opening another motel next week.
The hotel and motel conversions, as well as the safe sleeping site, are part of the city’s plans to create a broader spectrum of solutions as it attempts to make inroads into the homelessness crisis gripping Santa Clara County.
According to the last point-in-time count, San Jose had 6,503 homeless residents, though the city has shown significant progress in reducing unsheltered homelessness.
Once the city adds the nearly 1,000 interim housing placements it has planned for this coming year, Mahan estimated that it would be able to increase the sheltered rate from 39% to about 50%.
“That would mean half of the nearly 6,000 homeless residents in our community aren’t sleeping along our creeks or on our streets,” Mahan said. “They’re sleeping in a bed each night. They are accessing the services they need to turn their lives around.”
Housing Director Erik Solivan said that the initial goal was to have unhoused residents at the sanctioned tent site for no more than a month, but this would also depend on the expansion of the shelter system and how quickly its residents can transition to their next stop.
Although city officials viewed the safe sleeping site as a milestone, Public Works Director Matt Loesch said it has not been without challenges and delays since crews broke ground in April.
“We had a couple of things during construction that caused us a bit of drag,” Loesch said. “The place was broken into several times, and lots of damage was done to the already installed infrastructure.”
Mahan also addressed the current controversies around the San Diego safe sleeping sites, which have resulted in legal complaints being filed this week that allege that the sanctioned encampments provided “inaccessible and inhumane conditions.”
Among the conditions reported were rodents, inadequate food and a lack of shade to protect residents from heat or rain.
In acknowledging the concerns, Mahan said the city would have dedicated staff on-site to monitor the situation, while noting that, as imperfect as the safe sleeping site is, it represents an improvement over the conditions unhoused residents were living in.
“We will certainly actively manage this site to keep it safe and clean,” Mahan said.