Heatwave highlights problems of homeless assistance in Silicon Valley

The temperature in Los Gatos rose to 41 degrees when Mason, wearing a black coat and backpack, walked from his camp in the bush toward Highway 17. He began to experience heat symptoms and lay down, gasping for breath. He didn’t want to die on the road.

Mason, who only wanted to give his first name, made it back to the shade of his pop-up canopy. He knew the dangers of extreme heat because he had heard about a homeless San Jose resident who died last week. He also knew the benefit of going to a cooling center and knew about one of the two centers in Los Gatos, but he was hesitant to leave his belongings behind for fear they would be stolen or discarded. Years of homelessness have made him anxious.

“It’s kind of weird that we heard about this guy who died in San Jose, but we didn’t know there was (another) cooling center there,” Mason told San Jose Spotlight. “It’s kind of weird where the information goes or what’s considered information priority.”

He is one of thousands of homeless people across the county who are left without information about available assistance during extreme weather. It’s a problem that advocates say can have deadly consequences if cities, the county, nonprofit providers and transit agencies like the VTA, which offers free rides to cooling centers, have only a mixed bag of assistance options when temperatures rise.

Matt Mokhtarian, captain and spokesman for the Santa Clara County Fire Department, said he was concerned as a first responder that homeless residents were not receiving information about vital resources during extreme weather because different agencies were providing conflicting information.

“How do we get them to get that information and whose job is it to communicate with them effectively?” he told San José Spotlight. “How do we make a difference for them when they really need that time to find housing?”

The Santa Clara County coroner’s office is investigating five deaths in the homeless community this month that may be related to the heat, a county spokesperson said. About 50 homeless people have died countywide since 2019, with weather-related causes such as hyperthermia and hypothermia listed as factors, a San Jose Spotlight review of county coroner’s data found. That number is likely an underestimate, as more than 20 cases this year have yet to have a cause of death determined.

Not enough coordination

The number of homeless varies from the roughly 221 homeless people in the West Valley, the 6,266 homeless residents of San Jose and the 9,903 homeless people in the county identified in last year’s count, but county officials and stakeholders said the total is often underestimated.

Cities and counties rely on local stakeholders and nonprofit service providers like Abode Services to provide homeless residents with resources and supplies – and to spread the word about the cooling centers.

Todd Langton, executive director of the homeless nonprofit Agape Silicon Valley and founder of the Coalition for the Unhoused of Silicon Valley, says that’s where the problem begins. He says the different approaches to providing assistance lead to disorganization and a lack of communication, causing advocates to work in isolation from one another, which in turn reduces effectiveness.

“The way Silicon Valley is dealing with our homeless situation is extremely dysfunctional. It is disorganized, inefficient and slow to respond, and because of this, people are dying needlessly,” Langton told San José Spotlight.

He added that he was unaware of the VTA program and said it was problematic for him as someone who works directly with the homeless.

A VTA spokesperson said the transit agency relies primarily on word of mouth for the program throughout the county.

There are 22 designated cooling centers throughout the county, including three in San Jose, as well as libraries and reception rooms in shelters.

Beatriz Ramos, vice president of emergency shelter services at HomeFirst, said the nonprofit and other organizations meet with the county before extreme weather events to coordinate their responses.

“There are more warehouses than providers, and there are counties, and there are advocates, and there are volunteers, so we’re trying our best to utilize every single resource available to make sure we’re not duplicating effort,” she told San José Spotlight.

Last weekend, Ramos said, the nonprofit’s team made more than 88 outreaches to encampments, targeting primarily older adults and people with health issues. They distributed ice-cold water bottles, educated homeless residents about cooling centers and the VTA program, and offered free rides to the centers in their fleet of vehicles.

Shana Kurlan, emergency services program manager for the Office of Supportive Housing, said response teams have distributed about 7,500 water bottles since July 9. While that’s less than one water bottle for each of the nearly 10,000 homeless people in the county, Kurlan said the county is trying to reach as many people as possible, adding the county and its service providers are not the only ones distributing water.

Kurlan said the county takes these issues seriously and the more resources the better.

“I hope it doesn’t take another death for people to realize how dangerous the heat is,” she told San José Spotlight.

Lack of resources

But the range is not sufficient.

Alexander Abraha, who has been homeless in San Jose for 11 years, said he received free water and food from a nearby church but was not told about the VTA program or offered a ride to a cooling center. He has diabetes and was hospitalized because of the heat.

“I’m tired. My body can’t handle being outside,” he told San José Spotlight.

To get to a cooling center, 56-year-old Abraha would have to walk about 30 minutes – due to his health problems, this is too far for him.

Scott Largent, a homelessness advocate, said distance is often an issue for the homeless community, especially when they have to leave their encampments to access money. He said he was surprised there was no cooling center near San Jose Mineta International Airport, where a large encampment is located.

“Usually during a heat wave, these centers are too far away for most people to leave their camps… so we go there with water, ice and other supplies,” he told San José Spotlight.

The West Valley

In the West Valley, small communities like Campbell and Los Gatos struggle with limited or no services available to their homeless residents.

The Campbell Community Center serves as the city’s cooling center. City Manager Brian Loventhal said that while police inform homeless residents of services when they see them, no city team goes to the encampments. The city informs residents through social media, its website and a digital board outside the community center, and is in the process of hiring a homeless coordinator to help with outreach.

Los Gatos uses its library as a cold storage facility from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the Jewish Community Center was open during the worst of the heat last week. However, the city has cut some of its programs and decided to limit its hotel service and offer homeless residents a hotel room this year only during cold and rainy weather and poor air quality. Mason would have used the hotel program during the heat.

Los Gatos City Councilman Rob Moore advocated for the hotel program to include both hot and cold, but said the city has limited financial resources and political will.

“I think we have to be honest with ourselves. If we claim to care about our homeless neighbors, we also have to be OK with and interested in finding places they can call home and a bed where they can lay their head at night,” he told San José Spotlight.

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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