Homeless treasure is San Jose’s trash
City encampment sweeps: ‘They don’t save anything— they’ll compact it right in front of you’
SAN JOSE — In a nondescript warehouse about 1,000 feet from Coyote Creek in North San Jose, 10 studio-size rooms store the sum of what’s been collected by the city during recent sweeps of homeless camps.
There are bikes, scores of them, along with a half-dozen wheelchairs, a smattering of luggage, a few generators, a set of truck tires and a mobility scooter that’s been around since 2014. But surprisingly absent from the largely vacant rooms are tents, sleeping bags or propane stoves — the necessities of outdoor living.
That’s because those things typically end up in a trash compactor to be crushed on-site.
“They don’t save anything — they’ll compact it right in front of you,” said a homeless man who goes by “Tripper,” peering out from his tent at a Coyote Creek encampment known as Jurassic Park. “Tents, clothing, bikes, whatever. There’s no telling them it’s valuable, not at all. They’ll crush the things you need to survive.”
But the city says it’s still following standards set up five years ago, when officials — after being warned they risked legal challenges that could cost millions of dollars — agreed to hold on to the possessions of homeless people displaced during encampment sweeps for 90 days. Under those standards, property to be stored includes necessities such as tents, pots and pans, stoves, backpacks, books, photo albums and documents. The problem is there’s a caveat: Any item that is “dirty or soiled,” “contaminated,” “hazardous,” “broken or disassembled” is immediately discarded.
And that’s when decisions about what to keep and what to toss get subjective. A new-in-box Coleman stove? That’s a keeper. But one that’s been used, even lightly, and may have cooking stains? That’s trash. As is any tent, along with its contents.
Ray Bramson, San Jose’s homeless services coordinator, said the city has been following the standards set in 2012 when then-independent police auditor and former Judge LaDoris Cordell cautioned the city that it could be on the hook for sizable legal fees if personal property rights of the homeless weren’t respected. Fresno paid $2.3 million in 2008 after the city was sued over similar issues.
Bramson acknowledged that the city has “clear, strict criteria” for what will be saved from the compactors that are brought in at the end of a homeless sweep — and the overwhelming majority of what’s found does not make the cut.
“The expectation shouldn’t be that ‘I’m going to leave behind personal property because it’s going to be stored,’ ” Bramson said. “When you are living outside, oftentimes the things you collect are meager belongings that may offer some sense of ownership and possession. But the city can’t store all those things.”
Attorney Michael Risher of the American Civil Liberties Union sees it differently: Property rights don’t disappear just because something gets dirty.
“People would be shocked if the city towed away their car because it was old and dirty,” Risher said. “It may be that a homeless person’s property isn’t shiny and new, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need it to survive and they don’t have the constitutional right to it.”
The ACLU is involved in an class-action suit against Caltrans that alleges the agency trashed the possessions of homeless people living on state right-of-way property in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. No one is talking about taking action in San Jose yet, but advocates for the homeless say they’ve been documenting losses.
“What the city says should happen is just not happening,” said Peter Miron-Conk, the former executive director of the San Jose Urban Ministry who has worked with South Bay homeless since the 1970s. “They interpret everything as trash.”
Before cleaning up an encampment, the city gives homeless residents 72 hours to pack up and move out. Typically, Bramson and activists say, most people are out before the crews — a city supervisor, police, the cleanup contractor’s workers and a Santa Clara Valley Water District crusher truck — arrive. When the city arrives, any remaining campers are escorted away from their belongings.
Crews then isolate items of value and throw the rest into the compactor.
“They’ve taken brandnew barbecue grills,” said Marie Perry, one of the homeless people flooded out of Coyote Creek in February. “I had canned food, nonperishables — they took all my spaghetti! They’ve told me they just don’t consider my stuff storable.”
Cordell said this week that “everybody was on board” back in 2012 when her office met with city officials.
“Our office was very satisfied with the outcome,” she said. “We worked with the city attorney to update the policy on homeless possessions to comply with the law. You cannot deprive people of their property without due process.”
Cordell said a key part of the policy was that nothing deemed a personal possession would be thrown out.
“Garbage is garbage,” she said. “But sleeping bags, tents, books, Bibles, medi- cations, backpacks, folding chairs — this is clearly not trash.”
Risher said other cities, like Fresno and San Francisco, have been more open to what’s storable and what’s not.
“They basically comply when they are forced to,” said Kelly Cutler of the Coalition on Homelessness, which was involved in filing claims and threatening legal action in San Francisco. “They had a policy to bag and tag, and there were sweeps almost every day, but they only bagged about 19 items in two months. ... It’s very different when they know they’re being watched.”
Robert Aguirre, a longtime South Bay homeless advocate, agreed. He believes that while San Jose’s policy hasn’t changed, there has been a shift in the sweep mentality, particularly after a massive cleanup of the notorious “Jungle” encampment in 2014.
Under the agreement brokered by Cordell, the city agreed to keep items for at least 90 days before disposing of them. Bramson estimates that less than 1 percent of the items stored in the past six months have been reclaimed.
“We post a number for people to call, but we don’t get too many calls,” he said.
Elisa Della-Piana of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights says that shouldn’t be a surprise.
“People think their stuff was destroyed, or they have physical limitations on how they can go about getting their belongings back,” she said. “They might have disabilities or access issues. I think the goal should be not taking their things in the first place.”
Aguirre is petitioning to be a legal observer for the city — independent eyes to make sure sweeps are being done in accordance with policy.
“Maybe it will make them follow the rules if I’m watching,” he said, “and maybe then they’ll start following the rules when nobody is watching.”