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This message is from outside the City email system Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources Rules and Open Government meeting on August 9
Patty Linder
Mon 8/7/2023 9:17 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:Foley, Pam <[email protected]>
Some people who received thi me age don't often get email from Learn why thi i important I'm unable to attend the meeting but want to let you know that I am vigorously opposed to encampment zones and expect the city to focus on housing solutions and community dialogue.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors...well, guess what, the unhoused are our neighbors too! Warm Regards,
Patty Linder
839 Bend Avenue
San Jose CA 95136-1804
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This message is from outside the City email system Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources Item C1 NO to emcampment zones
lanib <[email protected]>
Mon 8/7/2023 10:58 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:Sergio Jimenez
You don't often get email from Learn why thi i important Criminalization of our unhoused population is not what I would wish for.
No encampment zones only moves the problem around.
Housing solutions with community conversations are paramount.
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR is not just words. It's a community in action...including and with help from our city representatives.
DO NOT CRIMINALIZE HOMELESSNESS.
Lani Ballard
District 2 resident
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S8, an AT&T 5G Evolution capable smartphone [External Email]
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Comments on San Jose City Rules and Open Government Committee Agenda August 9 2023 Item C1
Tom Fitch
Mon 8/7/2023 11:59 AM
To:City Clerk <[email protected]>
Cc:District4 <[email protected]>;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]> Some people who received this message don't often get email from . Learn why this is important Hello,
I want to make my voice heard in opposition of the mayor's memo ROGC 23-268 found here:
https://sanjose.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=12202438&GUID=CCEFBF27-01DB-43C3-BE42- 2B1B6EFF1C74
This proposes to further criminalize unhoused people in San Jose, multiplying their hardships when we should be helping them instead.
Instead of spending time and resources on encampment bans we should be focused on community based responses. We should help neighbors (housed and unhoused) communicate and reduce tension and address complaints together. And we should help the unhoused by better connecting them with services and helping them solve their problems.
I've personally seen the unhoused in parks near my home and found that when talking to people, instead of reporting them, that there is a lot more we can do to help.
The mayor already announced "Together SJ" and has funding for this effort. We should focus on that type of action, not the polar opposite -- criminalizing the unhoused.
We shouldn't be pushing "no encampment" zones or criminalizing the unhoused. Please do not move forward with this. They need our help and our support, not additional ways to persecute them. We should fund community based solutions and not require sworn officers / workers to drive these solutions or interactions and address complaints. Please use city time and money to pursue additional community based solutions and services, bringing housed and unhoused neighbors together.
Thank you for your time,
Thomas Fitch
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RV encampment poses safety and security concerns for our students long ngo
Mon 8/7/2023 7:14 PM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
You don't often get email from . Learn why this is important Hello San Jose City Council,
The presence of the RV encampment poses safety and security concerns for our students and staff, affecting their learning environment and overall well-being.
Please relocate the RV encampment ituated near our chool premi e Thank you, Council
Sincerely,
Long Ngo
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Item C1 NO to emcampment zones
Rebekah Jensen
Tue 8/8/2023 7:45 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected] ;District2 [email protected] ;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]>
Hello,
I'm in District 2 and I'm writing to urge the city to NOT set up encampment zones for the unhoused that are going to be policed by law enforcement. Turning unhoused people into criminals and setting up an adversarial relationship with the police department is only going to make the situation worse.
Instead, work with the community to deal with complaints and to help people. Together SJ is supposed to be about social connection and connecting people to city resources. It's about empowering our neighborhoods. Bringing officers backed by the threat of violence and arrest into neighborhoods to enforce zones is the opposite of everything San Jose claims to stand for. Survival is not a crime! We need to fund city workers that can help people with services and outreach. --Rebekah Jensen
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Rules & Open Government Agenda Item C.1: OPPOSE/AMEND
Kathryn Hedges
Tue 8/8/2023 12:45 PM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:District3 <[email protected]>;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]>;Ortiz, Peter <[email protected]>;Doan, Bien <[email protected]>;Cohen, David <[email protected]>
Dear Mayor and Councilmembers:
I am a member of SURJ at Sacred Heart and live in District 3 downtown between St. James Park and City Hall. We are supporting the other Sacred Heart organizing committees, RECS and SOS, as well as our community accountability partner, SJ DeBug. Our coalition opposes the criminalization of homelessness in San José because it is inhumane and creates a vicious cycle that makes it harder to get off the streets permanently. Driving the wedge between housed and unhoused people even deeper may get votes, but it doesn't build a stronger community or solve the underlying issues that drive homelessness.
I understand that we need to keep our children safe at school, and I am sad to hear about the incidents at KIPP and other schools. Using law enforcement to eliminate the encampments at Educational Park Drive (and other locations) seems like the quick, easy, and obvious solution to the security problems on these campuses. (Just like War on Drugs 2.0 seems like an easy way to improve quality of life downtown.) Yet this approach seems to run counter to the Mayor's promise to wait until more interim housing is built to enforce encampment bans. More importantly, it is counter to his promise to "build social connection and residential engagement" with the new grant the City of San José recently won. Why are we not trying to build connections between the encampment dwellers and the surrounding homeowners/tenants to drive out the criminal elements associated with encampments?
I have friends and neighbors who lived in vans and RVs and were not doing drugs or burglarizing schools. They were trying to survive without enough income (from work or disability benefits) to afford rent in San José. I would hate to see their survival tactics criminalized, because making it a crime to live without a house isn't how you get people into housing when there is no housing they can afford and they're already on the waiting list for affordable housing. I am sure there are RV/van dwellers who are just as afraid of the criminal element that associates with encampments as the surrounding homeowners/tenants are. Why don't we enlist them to help with the problems? What can we do to include RV/van dwellers in a Neighborhood Watch to keep thieves, vandals, and drug users off the campuses? Why don't we use some of that community-building grant money to try a community-building approach first instead of just sweeping any encampments near schools?
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Item C.1: Oppose no encampment zones, add non sworn outreach workers Emma Hartung
Tue 8/8/2023 7:46 PM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:District3 <[email protected]>;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]> Some people who received thi me age don't often get email from Learn why thi i important
Hi, my name is Emma Hartung from District 3 and I am a member of SURJ at Sacred Heart, speaking in solidarity with RECS and SOS at Sacred Heart.
Many of the best, most hardworking and caring San Jose residents that I know are homeless, have been homeless, or are at risk of becoming homeless because of the unsustainable cost of living in our city. Our neighbors are losing their homes due to a punishing cost of living and lack of social safety net that leaves them without any other option when disability, chronic health issues, old age and eviction leave them without options and with one change in circumstances any one of us could be next
As a San Jose community, we need solutions that will address the root causes of displacement and homelessness and ensure the wellbeing of all our community members, including our neighbors currently surviving on the streets because we have not yet mobilized to address our affordability and housing crisis. That's why:
1) We ask you NOT to move forward with no encampment zones and are opposed to any measures that would increase the criminalization of our unhoused neighbors. 2) We support more funding for non-sworn city workers for services and outreach for our unhoused neighbors and community based interventions that bring together housed and unhoused neighbors to address complaints.
Thank you for your time,
Emma Hartung
San Jose, CA 95116
District 3
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This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. comment on Agenda Item C.1.
Teela Pulliam
Tue 8/8/2023 11:01 PM
To:City Clerk [email protected] ;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan [email protected] Some people who received this message don't often get email from Learn why this is important Dear Mayor and Councilmembers:
I am a member of SURJ at Sacred Heart. As I can not attend the meeting, I am writing to voice my opposition to no encampment zones as proposed in agenda item C1.
I am an elementary school teacher and while I agree that something needs to be done to keep students safe on the way to and at school and prevent theft and damage to school property, criminalizing homelessness is not that thing. The majority of the unhoused people living in these encampments also want the criminal behavior to stop. In the spirit of the 'Together SJ' program the effort and expense needed to enforce the proposed no encampment zones should instead be used to build connections between the encampment dwellers and
the surrounding schools/homeowners/tenants to drive out the criminal elements.
I ask you NOT to move forward an approach to encampment which relies on law enforcement and thus will only further criminalize our unhoused neighbors. Instead of criminalization, develop community based responses that include conversations between unhoused and housed neighbors to resolve complaints and connect people with services.
I support more funding for non-sworn city workers for services and outreach for our unhoused neighbors and community based interventions that bring together housed and unhoused neighbors to address complaints.
I urge you to reject the proposal in this memorandum.
Thank you for your time,
Teela Pulliam
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San Jose City Rules and Open Government Committee Agenda August 9 2023 Item C1 Sarah Hollingsworth
Wed 8/9/2023 7:42 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:District2 <[email protected]>;The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]> Dear Council Members,
My name is Sarah, I am an active voter in District 2 and also a member of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) at Sacred Heart, speaking in solidarity with RECS and SOS at Sacred Heart.
I strongly urge you to NOT move forward with an approach to encampment that relies on law enforcement and thus will only further criminalize our unhoused neighbors. Instead of criminalization, develop community based responses that include conversations between unhoused and housed neighbors to resolve complaints and connect people with services.
The rush to crack down on encampments and RVs is based on assumptions with no evidence that increased criminalization of unhoused residents and people in RVs will do anything to increase the safety of students, faculty and staff at our schools.
What we do know for sure is that increased criminalization will lead to worse outcomes for unhoused residents and people living in RVs, and make it even harder for them to achieve safe, stable, permanent homes.
Using police to solve our community problems is not the answer here. Your direction to staff should require them to develop a plan to foster communication between the school community and all the neighbors to discuss how everyone can work together and keep everyone safe.
The solution is not to criminalize people who need support and better housing. Work on fixing the root of why people cannot afford to live in Silicon Valley instead! Create affordable housing.
Thank you,
Sarah
Hollingsworth (she/her)
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Opposing Item C.1 look for meeting needs, addressing root causes, and long term solutions
Nora Larson
Wed 8/9/2023 8:12 AM
To:City Clerk <[email protected]>
Cc:The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]>;District3 <[email protected]> Some people who received this message don't often get email from . Learn why this is important
My name is Nora Larson; I live in District 3 and I am a member of SURJ at Sacred Heart, speaking in solidarity with RECS and SOS at Sacred Heart.
I am a teacher, and I agree that students and teachers deserve to feel safe at school so they can learn- AND I believe our neighbors experiencing homelessness equally deserve to feel safe and have their needs met so they can get back on their feet Creating an ordinance prohibiting encampments and vehicle dwelling within 150 feet of schools teaches our students the wrong lesson that the solution to societal problems is moving it 150 down the road This is not a solution to the root causes of homelessness.
Let’s teach our students to address root causes this is how we will solve community problems, together, long term. We ask you NOT to move forward an approach to encampment which relies on law enforcement and thus will only further criminalize our unhoused neighbors Instead of criminalization, develop community based responses that include conversations between unhoused and housed neighbors to resolve complaints and connect people with services.
We support more funding for non sworn city workers for services and outreach for our unhoused neighbors and community based interventions that bring together housed and unhoused neighbors to address complaints.
from elsewhere like the over-sized nearly billion dollar SJPD budget in order to accomplish the goals to support our houseless communities with immediate housing support. Our understanding is that the city approved “safe RV/Car parking” zones but did not approve the funding for it. Now, we are not in a better position to actually serve and aid our houseless communities but we are proposing ordinances that will prompt the harassment and arrests of houseless folks, further perpetuating the cycle of houselessness. In an honest reflection of this proposal, one can not help but think of ordinance as a tool for segregation.
This proposal will exclude and criminalize our houseless communities dealing with extreme poverty in Silicon Valley from being able to exist in certain designated areas. We warn the decision makers for this proposal that this is a very slippery slope into even more unthinkable laws targeting select communities.
Lastly, as an organization that has worked with youth for over 20 years, we are acutely aware that there are many students in our city who are also struggling with housing insecurities, houseless themselves or have family who is. How is this ordinance going to make those young people feel safer or welcomed at their schools? We feel that the priority of this memo is to appear to be “tough on crime” or appear to be proactive on the “homeless problem” but at the root, does not address the systemic issues of poverty and homelessness, nor is it keeping kids safe and may actually cause irreversible harm to youth who are houseless. We are in support of keeping kids safe but we know we can not criminalize our way to safety and that is what this proposal is doing.
Please consider this letter and oppose the recommendation in item C.1 “ADDRESSING ENCAMPMENTS AND RV’S AROUND SCHOOLS”.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Andrew Bigelow
Silicon Valley De-Bug
Liz Gonzalez
Silicon Valley De-Bug
Raj Jayadev
Silicon Valley De-Bug
Charisse Domingo
Silicon Valley De-Bug
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Item C1 Rules Committee Agenda meeting on August 9, 2023 [email protected]
Wed 8/9/2023 8:59 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]> Some people who received thi me age don't often get email from Learn why thi i important Dear Honorable Mayor Mahan and City Council Members,
I write as a person of faith in solidarity with SURJ, Survivors of the Street, and Race Equity and Community Safety asking you to love your neighbor as yourself. In Luke 10:29-37 of the Christian Bible the Samaritan proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers and was left for dead since he was the one who showed him mercy. Unhoused people are our neighbors. Please show mercy and don’t use the police to criminalize them.
Instead leverage community building partnerships, engage with the housed and unhoused in community dialogue and treat everyone with dignity and respect.
People lose their housing for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is lack of access to affordable housing. A disproportionate number of unhoused persons are in poverty due to systemic racism, and/or any number of factors such as being former foster youth, disabled, domestic violence victims, victims of traumatic brain injury, or elderly. These people already suffering from the trauma of homelessness, are pushed around, have their belongings thrown away and are treated like criminals for the crime of being poor. Is it any wonder that a many of our homeless neighbors develop mental illness or suffer more severe mental illness and some resort to drugs?
I ask you to seriously consider the wisdom of implementing no encampment zones even without using the police. According to the memo from city staff regarding Item 8.3 on November 29 2022:
“The implementation of no encampment zones requires the constant abatement of individuals experiencing homelessness. The process of abatement is traumatic for unsheltered individuals because they may lose their sense of safety and material belongings that can cause unintended repercussions to their ability to recover from homelessness.” As you consider your vote, please consider treating our unhoused community as your neighbors and not as criminals. Love them as you do yourselves, your family, and friends.
With hope and gratitude for your service,
Lorraine Zeller
member of Urban Sanctuary
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This message is from outside the City email system Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources Agenda Item C.1 on Rules Committee Agenda
Rachel Krantz
Wed 8/9/2023 9:51 AM
To:City Clerk [email protected]
Cc:The Office of Mayor Matt Mahan <[email protected]> Some people who received thi me age don't often get email from Learn why thi i important Dear City Council Rules Committee and Mayor Mahan,
My name is Rachel Krantz. I am a member of SURJ at Sacred Heart, writing in solidarity with RECS and SOS at Sacred Heart.
As a therapist working in San Jose for the past 12 years, I have seen the devastating effects of homelessness on my clients and their loved ones. Being unhoused makes it incredibly difficult to keep a job, go to school, or take care of a family. Being unhoused exacerbates mental health difficulties and often leads to repeated trauma.
There is no evidence that criminalizing unhoused residents and people in RVs will do anything to increase the safety of students, faculty or staff at our schools.
We ask you NOT to move forward an approach to encampment which relies on law enforcement.
This will only further criminalize our unhoused neighbors. Instead of criminalization, develop community based responses that include conversations between unhoused and housed neighbors to resolve complaints and connect people with services.
We support more funding for non-sworn city workers for services and outreach for our unhoused neighbors. We support community-based interventions that bring together housed and unhoused neighbors to address complaints.
Sincerely,
Rachel Krantz