Advocates say the ‘wall’ is no solution
City blocks homeless from site with taller, tougher fence
SAN JOSE » Ever since the homeless mega-camp known as the Jungle was cleared out in December 2014, neighbors who live a short distance away along Interstate 280 near McLaughlin Avenue have seen a resilient offshoot appear just beyond their backyards.
Those who live at the new camp call it “Jungle 280” or “Macredes” — a nod to the street with the main access point near the freeway. Now, that entrance is being closed off: Caltrans is putting up an 8-foot-tall grill-like barrier with holes much smaller than a typ- ical chain-link fence, making it nearly impossible to climb. And far tougher to cut.
While the fence is in part a response to neighborhood complaints that started two years ago, advocates for the homeless have dubbed it “The Wall.” And they say it’s the wrong way to go.
“They will literally just cross the street and set up another camp,” said Pastor Scott Wagers of CHAM Ministries, which does outreach to outlier homeless communities via a “Mercy Mobile” distribution center. “Money should be spent on larger solutions — not just keeping people out. It’s building up the level of absurdity.”
A Caltrans spokeswoman said the new barrier is being installed “to replace damaged state right-of-way fences.”
Activists like Wagers have called for legal encampments, with services and sanitation, as a humane alternative to deterrents such as sweeps and highsecurity fences.
“Ever since the Jungle, the solution has been abatement,” Wagers said. “That’s a primitive solution. This is a sophisticated, cutting-edge, high-tech city and that’s the best solution out there? To build a wall?”
Wagers, who was at the site this week delivering granola bars and bottled water to the hot and thirsty homeless, said he and other advocates had been hoping to “build a bridge” with upset neighbors toward a solution but found progress difficult. He’s been yelled at for bringing the Mercy Mobile around Macredes, and a recent community meeting brought out a throng of people voicing concerns about their unsheltered neighbors.
“Some have been very vociferous about not wanting the camp there,” he said. “They’re very determined to make them go somewhere else.”
Dilsa Alvo, who has lived behind the trail for 13 years, isn’t one of those particularly vocal neighbors. Speaking softly through her 16-year-old son serving as translator, she said they have had unpleasant incidents, such as a backyard barbecue with friends interrupted by campers asking for food. And they’ve had some tools go missing.
One neighbor suspects camp-
ers absconded with his gaspowered generator; another said two bicycles disappeared from his yard although he “didn’t want to point fingers.” And others complained of people walking down the street at all hours, sometimes with dogs, making noise and littering.
Alvo said the path was more widely used before the encampment sprouted but now the general public is leery about using the trail.
“There were teenagers who would go through, and adults would walk their kids to school along the path — it used to be a shortcut for everyone,” she said.
After an April sweep, Rosa Rascon, a 61-year-old who has for decades lived in many camps in the Story Road area, said the homeless residents got targeted because the site became too popular. While there were fewer than a dozen people there initially, the number more than tripled, with makeshift homes spread all along the linear path. Some sit on flat earthen pads carved from a slope leading to the freeway’s soundwall, while others incorporate pallets and constructs more permanent than a simple tent-and-tarp.
“People started coming in who didn’t understand you need to keep it clean,” she said. “We kept it clean, and it wasn’t a problem. Then they had sweeps on all sides of us and everybody came here.”
Rascon said the newcomers were young, and “they like the action.”
“There are a lot of drugs out here,” she said, “and no one is telling them what to do.”
State Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who recently had an affordable housing bill clear the senate, approached Caltrans about installing a better fence after receiving ongoing complaints from residents since 2015.
“Homelessness is a severe dilemma that at times can pit one segment of society against another,” Beall said in a statement on Tuesday. “What’s happened in the McKinley-Bonita neighborhood is symptomatic of a much larger problem: homelessness in California.”
The high-security fencing will surround the foot of the Macredes Avenue cul-desac as well as entry points by the interstate on-ramp to the east and near the Coyote Creek Trail to the west. It’s part of a $291,000 project that’s also putting up wrought-iron fencing a mile and a half away, where Interstate 280 passes over South 3rd Street. Caltrans has already installed similar security barriers at a recurring campsite on Castro Street in Oakland.
Sachin Radhakrishnan, a co-founder of the In Their Shoes nonprofit that has worked to assist many of the homeless at the camp, doubted the fence would be effective.
“They say it’s impenetrable,” Radhakrishnan said. “But they’ll find a way back in. Come on, they’re skilled people, some of them are mechanics.” And even if they don’t move back, he said, that doesn’t solve the problem.
“People think they’re going to leave the area? They don’t have the means to leave,” he said. “They only have the means to move over the freeway to another camp.”