Some homeless to find a home at county fairgrounds during crisis
About 80 to be housed in exhibition hall to help relieve overcrowding in shelters; trailers will be used to isolate those infected
SAN JOSE >> Santa Clara County officials on Sunday showed how they were converting part of the fairgrounds to accommodate homeless people during the coronavirus pandemic.
An exhibit hall in the fairgrounds is expected to house about 80 homeless people who currently are in the county’s shelters, in an effort to ease overcrowding there and comply with social distancing orders amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
Santa Clara County Board President Cindy Chavez said during a tour of the fairgrounds facilities that the goal of the effort is to keep the virus from spreading among the homeless by spacing them out among shelters and facilities across the county.
“We want to make sure (the coronavirus) doesn’t run rampant” in the homeless community, Chavez said. “We’re really doing two things: We’re alleviating the shelter population (and providing) services for people who are homeless. Our goal is to expose as few people as possible to the virus.”
Along with the Gateway Hall exposition building that will be used to house homeless during the outbreak, the county is setting up a base of operations at Fiesta Hall, which could be used for overflow purposes if county shelters remain crowded.
The new shelter at the fairgrounds, which will be ready to use this week, adds to the increasing number of hotels, motels and other facilities across the county being used to temporarily keep unhoused people off the streets.
But homeless people living in the county’s many encampments and on the streets won’t find housing at the fairgrounds, as the facilities are meant to relieve overcrowding at shelters.
Chavez said the county is continuing its efforts to reach out to homeless people outside shelters to keep the virus from spreading among them.
“I don’t believe it will be enough,” Chavez said of the new facilities. “We’re looking toward getting other buildings and making a decision on those.”
Chavez said the state has sent the county 15 trailers that are being refurbished to be used as isolation chambers for any homeless people who are found to have the coronavirus.
The trailers will be hooked up to water and sewage service at the fairgrounds and, fairgrounds executive director Abe Andrade said, fairgrounds officials are working on getting electricity hookups. Chavez said the trailers should be ready by the end of the week.
Also at the fairgrounds is a Verily pilot screening site, affiliated with Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Through an online site, the company selects people for testing based on risk factors and who have been prioritized for testing after completing an online screening.
The fairgrounds also houses about 32 people living in RVs on a monthly lease. Chavez said the leases have been extended for the duration of the shelter-in-place order.
The order is scheduled to end April 7, though she said it’s unlikely it will be lifted then.
“In all likelihood, we’ll have another shelter-inplace order early this week,” Chavez said Sunday.
Once the coronavirus outbreak is over, Chavez said, people being housed at the fairgrounds will be connected to housing or asked to go back to the shelters they came from.
As the outbreak brings most business and some construction projects to a halt, Chavez said she’ll be speaking with health officials about the importance of completing housing projects currently in the works.
“If we slow down housing production, as soon as this is over we’re right back where we started,” Chavez said.
Despite the difficulties of simultaneously working to stop the spread of the coronavirus and continue the county’s business to house people, Chavez said Santa Clara County is well-positioned and has been more prepared than other places to get through the pandemic.
“There’s no place I’d rather live,” she said.