San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan knows all too well the challenges homelessness can impose on families.
His own cousin ended up living on the streets after falling into the throes of addiction, “bouncing from high to high” and “caught in a destructive cycle” in the late 80s, Mahan told The Mercury News. And despite a desire from his family to help, it was not always so easy to facilitate.
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“My aunt and uncle were out looking for him — they wanted to reconnect, and there were times when he wanted to reconnect — but that did not always happen because they had a hard time finding each other,” Mahan said. “There was a point at which he was pretty burned out on the drugs, exhausted by life on the street and looking for a change, and he ended up eventually accepting treatment and reconnecting with family and ultimately getting to a much better place.”
Now Mahan will be part of uniting other unhoused residents with friends and family willing to provide a supportive environment, after San Jose announced the launch of the “Homeward Bound” pilot program Tuesday.
The City Council has allocated $200,000 in this year’s budget for the program, with the goal of more quickly transitioning people off the streets, at a fraction of the cost of placing them into the city’s shelter system. Only those not awaiting placement in the city’s shelters would be eligible for the new program.
While San Jose is tripling its shelter capacity over the next year, the city still does not have enough capacity to offer spaces to the estimated 5,477 unsheltered residents living on its streets.
And although a sizable portion of its homeless population originated from other cities, Mahan stressed that the city is simply not looking to ship homeless residents away.
“We have to treat each person out on our streets as an individual human being, as a unique story, but in the cases where somebody living outside is willing and can find a faster pathway to stable housing by reconnecting with loved ones, we want to help facilitate that,” Mahan said.
Eligibility for the program requires informed consent from both unhoused residents and their loved ones looking to take them in. Homeless residents also cannot be on parole or probation that would limit their ability to leave San Jose.
Unhoused residents would only be able to use the program once.
While the city envisions that most of the funds will be spent on the staff facilitating the reunifications and bus and train tickets, Mahan said he was open to paying for other costs on a case-by-case basis, including connecting homeless residents to treatment or training programs. As part of the program, the city will also conduct post-relocation follow ups to ensure that person arrived at their destination and is abiding by their commitments.
Transporting homeless residents to other locales is not a new concept, as San Francisco operated multiple relocation assistance programs for decades. Data from its department of homelessness and supportive housing department showed that the city had relocated 1,157 people since 2022. Last year as the city’s shelter system became overwhelmed, Mayor London Breed issued an executive order mandating that homeless residents had to be offered bus tickets before other services.
But as San Jose looks at alternatives to facilitate moving homeless residents off the streets more quickly, some homeless advocates have expressed skepticism about the program and its intentions.
“Never had one person say to me that I’d love to go home,” said advocate Gail Osmer. “I think this is a horrible idea and another way to get rid of the unhoused.”
Osmer also questioned how effective the program could be without knowing what types of services would be available and how well-equipped friends and families are to deal with the problems.
If those services are not available, she feared that unhoused residents could be back on the streets without making any tangible progress.
“A lot of people have a lot of mental health problems and a lot of family members can’t connect with that,” Osmer said. “We just don’t have those services.”
As part of the screening process, Mahan said that the city’s outreach staff will ask friends and family about their ability to offer support and if they are aware of what that entails. However, he did acknowledge potential limitations as to what type of guidance the city can offer, especially since prospective services would be in another jurisdiction.
Mahan said that it remained to be seen how many people the program could help and that if the results were limited, the city would pivot to another solution.
However, with services and interim housing shelters already costing tens of thousands of dollars per year for each person and affordable housing estimated at $1 million per unit, the pilot program, supporters say, could offer a better value proposition to make some progress in chipping away at the homelessness crisis.
“If it’s a one-time cost of a few thousand dollars, that’s a wild success, to be perfectly honest, because keeping them chronically homeless on our streets costs a tremendous amount each year,” Mahan said.