San Jose bails on trailers for homeless
After only a month and spending $1.3 million, officials say site wasn’t conducive for elderly
After spending two months and more than $1.3 million repairing dozens of dilapidated state-owned trailers for homeless residents, San Jose is dismantling the temporary shelter site, just a month after people moved in.
Citing poor living conditions for elderly residents and constant maintenance burdens for the city, officials over the weekend transferred more than 30 homeless residents from the trailer site on a city-owned parking lot near Happy Hollow Park to countyleased hotel rooms.
The move came just one month after San Jose entered a $730,000 contract with Abode Services, a Bay Area-based homeless service provider, to operate 90 trailers to isolate homeless individuals with confirmed or presumed cases of COVID-19 or who have pre-existing conditions and are at a high risk of contracting the disease. Residents moved in two days later.
“We all recognize that this was an experiment,” Ragan Henninger, the city’s deputy director of housing, said in an interview Tuesday. “After giving it our best to make it work, we had to prioritize the safety and health of the vulnerable homeless people we were serving.”
Nearly 6,200 people in San Jose don’t have a place to call home and county health officials believe that at least 2,500 of them are at high risk of infection due to un
derlying conditions, according to San Jose Housing Director Jacky Ferrand-Morales. The majority of the city’s homeless population identify as Hispanic or African American — two segments of the population that are being hit the hardest by COVID-19 deaths within the city.
In what was initially hailed as a welcome boost to the city’s housing supply for homeless residents especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services delivered 104 emergency trailers to San Jose just days after the statewide shelter-inplace order went into effect in mid-March.
But the seemingly free donation, inevitably cost the city significant resources, staff time and more than $1.3 million in inspections, repairs and maintenance emergencies.
Shortly after they were delivered to San Jose, city staff discovered the trailers were riddled with defects — from missing sinks and countertops to damaged vents to inadequate electrical, water and sewage hookups.
Only 90 of the 104 trailers were even deemed habitable by the city.
Since the city was given just 24 hours of notice before the trailers arrived, officials quickly chose a site that they assumed would be vacant for the foreseeable future — a city-owned parking lot at the intersection of
Story Road and Remillard Court, adjacent to Happy Hollow Park, which was closed under the county public health order. While the city worked to repair the trailers, staff also constructed temporary electrical and sewer systems to stand-up the trailers in the lot.
When the city was finally prepared to welcome residents by mid-May, the city opted to open it in phases — starting with occupying just 30 of the 90 trailers. Yet, even that proved to be too much for the city’s temporary infrastructure systems.
The city encountered “daily maintenance emergencies” from sewerage overflows to power outages to even a small fire at one point, according to Henninger. City officials tested the equipment before the site was opened but Henninger said that until people moved onto the site, it was difficult to determine exactly how much power and what sewage structures would be best suited for the demand.
The site also posed unforeseen physical barriers issues for the elderly residents who were living on the site.
For the past month, the city had been using the site’s 30 vacated trailers to house older homeless individuals — who had an average age of 64 — with underlying health conditions. According to Abode Services and city staff, the residents struggled to get in and out of the trailers, maneuver around the large site and reach the laundry and trash services.
“It’s difficult to fully appreciate how much of an effort it is to make trailers work for a vulnerable population until you try it,” Katie Fantin, director of housing programs for Santa Clara County at Abode services. “They’re wonderful trailers but they have some deficits when it comes to mobility.”
The city’s contract with Abode, which was reached last month, lasts until the end of October. The city will continue to honor the contract as the agency transitions to providing on-site services for the individuals in the trailers to serving them in the hotels and motels.
As for the trailers, the city does not plan to keep them as a long-term option to house some of its homeless residents. According to Henninger, setting up the trailers with the right infrastructure — underground sewage and utilities — would cost more than $8 million.
The city is in conversations with the governor’s office of emergency services to determine whether the department will take the trailers back and whether the city will be eligible for any reimbursements for the costs incurred in repairing them and setting up the site.
Separately, San Jose recently set aside $17 million to build hundreds of “dormstyle” modular and prefabricated homes to serve its homeless population during the COVID-19 pandemic on three locations in the city — a site at Monterey and Bernal roads, a second at Evans Lane and a third at Rue Ferrari and Highway 101.