Photo by Eric Fang

BAY AREA CITIES SEE RISE IN RATES OF HOMELESSNESS

Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and tech billionaires that Silicon Valley is known for lies a starker version of the Bay Area, one riddled with alarming rates of homelessness.

The Bay Area housing market has priced out a large portion of the population, who have nowhere else to turn for a home.

According to point-in-time (PIT) counts by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Bay Area has the third-largest homeless population in the U.S., behind only New York City and Los Angeles.

 A 2017 PIT count estimated that 28,200 people were homeless in the Bay Area, with 70 percent of these people living in Alameda, Santa Clara and San Francisco Counties.

 The actual number of people experiencing homelessness in the Bay is likely to be higher. PIT counts can underestimate these numbers by two to three times due to technical difficulties and seasonal differences in rates of homelessness.

 As opposed to New York, which is able to provide shelter to 95 percent of its homeless population, the Bay Area suffers from a lack of affordable or government-subsidized housing. 67 percent of the Bay Area homeless population in 2017 was unsheltered, living in cars, encampments, on the streets and elsewhere. 

Rates of homelessness across the Bay Area have increased over the last two years. Preliminary PIT counts in 2019 show that, since 2017, homelessness has increased by 17 percent in San Francisco County, 31 percent in Santa Clara County and 43 percent in Alameda County.

What causes so many people in the Bay Area to become homeless? Destination Home, a public-private partnership dedicated to ending homelessness in the Silicon Valley, said it’s fundamentally because of a lack of affordable housing, particularly for low-income residents. 

“When folks can't find an affordable place to live, they become severely rent-burdened, spending more than half of their income on rent utilities, and become just one emergency away from ending up on the street,” David Low, Director of Policy and Communications at Destination Home, said. 

Destination Home deploys a housing-first model to tackling homelessness in Silicon Valley⁠—it believes that by getting people stably housed first, it can then help people get support for other problems they may be facing, such as mental illness, substance abuse or unemployment. 

On Nov. 4, Apple contributed $50 million to Destination Home’s Supportive Housing and Innovation Fund, which invests in supportive housing developments and works to prevent homelessness by providing employment services, legal aid and temporary financial assistance to people at risk of losing their housing. 

Destination Home’s collective impact model encourages collaboration between corporations like Apple, non-profit organizations, local governments and individuals. 

“For these big, hairy problems like homelessness, we really need to mobilize the whole community to do their part to address the crisis,” Low said. “Certainly we need more resources to address a problem that has grown to this magnitude, and we need more city council members and residents to see that the policy decisions we make every day are impacting this, whether it be our lack of building more affordable housing to the fact that rents are not keeping up with incomes.”

The best way for Silicon Valley residents to help, Low said, is to help tackle the systemic driver of homelessness by advocating for more affordable housing units to be built. 

“We need people to use their voice, show up to city council meetings, write the councilors while these decisions are being made to make sure that these developments are getting built,” Low said. 

 Raising awareness helps as well. People experiencing homelessness often face dehumanization and stigma from other people in their communities who don’t know of or understand their struggles.

“We’re just people who have happened on mishaps and stuff like that,” Rudy, who lives at the Interstate 280 off-ramp across the street from the upper school, said. “We’re no different than anyone.”

From San Jose to Oakland to Santa Rosa, these are some of their stories.

West San Jose: Two reporters from Harker Journalism visited the unhoused encampment across the street from the upper school to hear their stories

The homelessness crisis, in part, is visible from the upper school’s front gates. Makeshift tents are propped up next to the I-280 on-ramps. Shopping carts full of belongings are often lined up next to the school on Saratoga Avenue, and their owners can often be seen at nearby intersections at different times of the day. 

“I’ve been living here on and off for the last four years,” said Rudy, who has lived in a tent by the I-280 off-ramp since 2016. “I know at least 50 people that live right in this area and we all just try to make the best of it.” 

According to the 2019 Homeless Census from Santa Clara County, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the county has grown significantly over the last two years, from 7,394 to 9,706 people. San Jose alone makes up a large percentage of this amount, with a homeless count of 6,172 and an increase of 1,822 since 2017.
Most people in Silicon Valley become unable to afford housing costs after losing a job or experiencing a change in family composition, according to a study conducted by Destination Home from June 2017 to July 2019. 

For over 20 years, Rudy worked as a full-time machinist in South San Jose, but lost his job when the company he worked for was bought by a larger one. 

Soon after losing his job, Rudy’s wife died from cancer. He was later evicted from the apartment he was renting in Santa Clara. He tried living in different shelters and in his brother’s garage, but he struggles with alcoholism and couldn’t conform to the rules that were placed on him. 

Now, Rudy hopes to eventually be able to save enough money to rent another apartment. Rudy receives unemployment benefits and used to work for 20 years as a machinist at a small company in South San Jose. 

“I would like to live with a little bit of dignity before I move on, so it’d be nice to have something come up for me,” Rudy said.  

For the time being, Rudy keeps himself fed and clothed with help from community organizations like the Salvation Army and local churches and restaurants. 

“I’m very resourceful,” Rudy said. “I go to [the Potter’s House Christian Fellowship] church since they have lunches for the homeless and a lot of the nearby restaurants give out what they don't sell. There are places for me to go that allows me to stay afloat.”

Starbucks is one place that Rudy goes to for leftover food. The company began supporting the homeless community in late 2016 with its FoodShare program. Through this program, Starbucks donates leftover pastries and sandwiches to food banks such as the Second Harvest Foodbank daily. 

“I liked when the program started because before it started, the food would just go straight to the trash,” said Lauren Grisalin, a barista at the Starbucks on Saratoga Avenue across the street from the upper school. “I appreciate that it’s going somewhere now and not the trash because sometimes there is a lot of food.” 

Harker’s kitchen staff upholds a similar policy. According to head chef Steve Martin, Harker donates extra uncooked food to a San Jose based non-profit organization called Stand Up For Kids, which helps youth experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area. Stand Up For Kids volunteers pick up extra food directly from the upper school kitchen. 
“My decision has always been to have a purpose for the food and not to just throw it in the trash,” Martin said. “ There’s a lot of people in need, and it is good, healthy food. We need to be part of the solution, not the problem.”

Other upper school staff members and students are also working to address the homelessness issue in the Bay Area.

East San Jose: Loaves and Fishes provides meals to city’s hungry and homeless

A flood of chilly January air rushed into the Eastside Neighborhood Center in East San Jose as the room’s double glass doors opened. A line of two dozen people patiently waited for their dinner, next to 20 circular tables lined with white folding chairs. The menu was Indian food—naan, curry and a slice of red velvet cake. 

A walk around the space revealed a communal atmosphere. Families and friends talked to one another as they dug into one of the few stable sources of warm food they had access to.

The daily dinners are organized by Loaves & Fishes, a soup kitchen that delivers its food to nine locations all over the Bay Area, ranging from homeless shelters to senior centers. 

The organization serves dinner at Eastside Neighborhood Center to almost 100 people every weekday at 4:30 p.m. Corporations like Second Harvest Food Bank and Safeway allow Loaves & Fishes to prepare food at their kitchen in Morgan Hill, and outside volunteer groups donate dinners on Fridays.

Megan Chiang, a junior at Archbishop Mitty High School, has volunteered at Loaves & Fishes since last summer. She helps serve food and clean up the kitchen around once or twice a week. 

“We don’t come from the same background, so I have the chance to use my privilege to help people who don’t have the same opportunities,” Megan said. 

The service is completely free and is not only catered towards people who are homeless, but also people with lower incomes and families who don’t have the time to cook.

“There are a lot of regulars. Probably 85-90 percent are repeat guests. This is probably one of their main sources of food everyday,” delivery driver and soup kitchen supervisor Cynthia Keith said.  

One regular is Shahid Chowdhry, who is unemployed and currently lives out of his car. After watching “Joker” at the movie theatre with his sister, one of their two cars got stolen, which was like “losing a house.”

“[The housing crisis] is an epidemic situation, but Santa Clara County has got to do something new. There is always something you can do,” Chowdhry said. “If they can go to the Moon and build housing there, they can do it here too.”

Joyce Marie Brennan, who moved to San Jose from Cincinnati, comes to Loaves & Fishes often. She lives in an RV with her husband and two-year-old chihuahua Jesus. 

“My husband and I have to rent an RV until we can find a suitable place, which will probably take forever because it feels like nobody cares,” Brennan said. “I workout and shower everyday. I want to be clean and well-respected because people might be more likely to help me then.”

The discrimination she faces from her neighbors makes living in an RV invariably harder. 

“I used to have a neighbor on 17th street who liked to call the police all the time. One day, I walked up to her and I told her to stop doing that,”  Brennan said. “Don’t think that every person living in their car is doing drugs or drinking. Just because we don’t have a home doesn’t mean we’re into drugs or doing any of that.”

David Madey volunteers at Loaves & Fishes on Fridays, bringing around drinks, helping prep the food and cleaning up at the end. After graduating from the University of California at Davis, and finding a job in San Jose, he decided to donate his extra time towards community service.

Having helped with dinner for over a year and a half now, Madey has built several close relationships with the people he sees every week.

“When you come back every week, you start to build a symbiotic relationship with some of these people. You're both making each other feel good,” Madey said. “One person even told me today that they come here because of me, and I didn’t even realize that. Rather than just people showing up, being robots and leaving, it becomes more community focused.”

Oakland: Moms4Housing activist group sparks protests for affordable housing, demands change to rising homelessness

Dominique Walker, 34, grew up in Oakland around a tight community of family and friends. The city during Walker’s childhood in the 90’s was diverse and vibrant--rap and punk music flourished, youth activists took to the streets and the economy climbed. 

When it came time for college, Walker moved to Mississippi and got a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She worked as a lactation consultant and organizer and had a daughter and a son, now five and one years old. 

In April, Walker returned to Oakland with her children after fleeing domestic violence. What she found in her hometown surprised her. 

Most of her family and friends had been pushed out of the city by rising housing costs, to locations hours away. Some had lost their houses entirely. 

With student loans, debt from her move and rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland costing $2,551 a month on average, Walker struggled to find affordable housing as well. 

“They tell you to go to school, they tell you to get a degree, but what does that mean,” Walker said. “And just because I have a degree doesn’t mean that people with no degrees don’t deserve housing. Everyone deserves a house.”

For a while, Walker and her children stayed with family members who had been displaced to 45 minutes outside Oakland. She spent hours commuting into the city and worked two jobs. Soon, she began living in hotel rooms. 

When looking for help to find housing, Walker was told to call 2-1-1, a Bay Area program that refers callers to local social services. Oakland offers emergency housing and one-time rental or move-in assistance to people struggling to find affordable housing. But these programs often suffer from a lack of space and funding and offer only temporary solutions. 

“I went through every program. No program helped me. The funding was cut for one of the programs when I came there with my lease. They were supposed to help me with my deposit, my first month’s rent. I came in there, and I left empty-handed,” Walker said. “So what is a mother supposed to do when there’s no other options?” 

In the midst of the Bay’s ongoing housing crisis, Walker’s story is not new nor unique. 4,071 people are homeless in Oakland, a 47 percent increase since 2017. 

But Walker and three other mothers drew national attention when they took matters into their own hands on Nov. 18, forming a collective called Moms 4 Housing and moving into a house that had stood vacant for two years. When the owner, Wedgewood Properties, tried to evict them, they filed a “right to possession” claim, arguing that housing is a human right. 

While a judge ruled against them on Jan. 10, and a team of police in military gear forcibly evicted them before dawn on Jan. 14, hundreds of supporters rallied in front of the house on Jan. 13 and 14, decrying a system that denied these mothers housing. 

Many of these protesters had also experienced eviction and homelessness firsthand. 

Oakland resident Andre Burton, 40, rushed to Moms’ House after hearing what he thought were gunshots on the morning of Jan. 14. He had been living with his great-aunt on the same street as the moms after he was evicted from his home in December. 

In reality, what he thought were gunshots was the sound of Oakland deputies ramming down the moms’ door. 

“I immediately came out and got my GoPro camera and started taking pictures,” Burton said. “I’m really passionate about what [the moms] are doing and the need for housing. I grew up here in Oakland. I’ve never seen this many homeless people out here in my life.”

Burton was evicted from his Oakland home after living in it for seven years. The home was in need of repairs, and he contracted MRSA, a type of bacterial skin infection, from black mold in the house. 

“Because I called the proper city officials, the landlord in turn retaliated by evicting me,” Burton said. 

Since his eviction, Burton has been living with relatives or on the streets. All of the shelters he contacted were full.

“It’s kind of a waiting game,” Burton said. “It’s stressful because I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a place again with all of the rent hikes and everything.”

The lack of a stable place to live has taken a toll on Burton’s health. 

 “I’ve been having headaches, rheumatoid arthritis, everything’s been flaring up with the stress level and being out in the cold,” Burton said. “And people on the street, how are they going to the hospital and getting healthcare? To me, they’re basically just killing people off.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has labeled homelessness a public health issue. People experiencing homelessness tend to also experience higher rates of health problems like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hypertension, asthma and diabetes, according to the American Public Health Association. 

Part of the problem is a lack of access to healthcare and social services. On top of not having a stable address, many people experiencing homelessness lack a reliable means of transportation, are disabled or don’t have health insurance, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.    

As more people in Oakland have become unsheltered recently, people have also been outspoken about clearing away homeless encampments. 

Oakland property developer Gene Gorelik made headlines in July when he tried to get people to leave a homeless encampment in front of a Home Depot by announcing “Free Money!” over a bullhorn and offering $1,000 to each person who left.   

“That was a publicity stunt,” Gorelik said. “The net result of it was the city said they would close the camp by the end of the year, but they haven’t done it.”

Oakland officials have announced plans to clear the encampment by mid-March by moving people at the site into shelters or community cabin sites.

Gorelik believes the city is mistaken to be providing services for people experiencing homelessness.

“Giving any more homeless services increases the problem,” Gorelik said. “It’s like pigeons, they go wherever they can get the most money or food or support their lifestyle drugs. They don’t want to go into shelter.”

Burton said these are common misconceptions--that people who are unsheltered don’t want shelter or are on drugs. According to the National Coalition to End Homelessness, 26 percent of people who are homeless struggle with drug addiction, and addiction can be both a cause and result of homelessness. 

“A lot of people are homeless because the housing system has failed them,” Burton said. “Nobody wants to be out on the street, nobody wants to be in a space where they don’t have any shelter or any privacy or things like that. I’ve been there and it’s a very dehumanizing feeling.”

Santa Rosa: Life in the Joe Rodota Trail encampment, before it was cleared by city officials

Only a chain-link fence separates the Joe Rodota Trail, a pedestrian and bike path, from California State Route 12 in Santa Rosa. The whooshing sound of cars on the expressway is constant, loud and unavoidable. 

For the over 250 people living in the two mile-long encampment on the trail before Jan. 31, that sound formed the backdrop to their daily lives. 

Over the month of January, city officials relocated the individuals living at the trail encampment, sending some to shelters across the city and some to temporary “pallet buildings” with bunk beds, heat and electricity in Los Guilicos in East Santa Rosa, a two-hour drive from the trail. Others were forced to set up their tents elsewhere or face possible arrest. 

A flyer pasted on the door of a portable toilet on the trail on Jan. 20 read, “The Choice is Yours...ON JANUARY 31, THE TRAIL WILL BE CLEARED! You will have to decide on one of these: 1) Shelter in the Pallet House, 2) Stay on the trail and face criminal charges, 3) Set up your camp somewhere else, 4) Rent your own apartment or rent some kind of a something with a group.”

Life on the trail was hard. Temperatures dipped dramatically at night, and living in tents or under tarps became even more miserable when it rained. 

But for many people who lived on the Joe Rodota Trail, the encampment offered a sense of security and community. In other words, it was home. 

Joseph Vicino, 37, had been living on the trail with his dog, Rocky, for the past six months, ever since his trailer got towed with all his money and belongings. 

“It’s kind of nice having a place to go without getting kicked out every morning and having to move your stuff because if you get kicked out every morning, how would you bring all your stuff with you,” Vicino said. “I’d only [be able to] carry what I can fit in my backpack, and it'd be hard to live like that.” 

Before becoming unsheltered, Vicino had owned a home on Stony Point Road in West Santa Rosa. However due to financial struggles, like losing his construction job with Ghilotti Bros., Inc. in 2017, he sold his house and began renting a smaller home in Coffey Park, a large residential neighborhood in North Santa Rosa. 

Then came the 2017 Tubbs fire, which devastated large swaths of the outlying residential communities of Santa Rosa from Oct. 8-31. 

5,500 homes were destroyed in the flames. Although Vicino’s own home was spared from the fire, nearly every house in Coffey Park was burned down. 

With more than 3,000 homes, or five percent of the housing stock, destroyed in Santa Rosa alone, rent skyrocketed. 

From 2016 to the end of 2017, the city saw a 9.3 percent increase in housing prices, according to the Sonoma County Economic Development Board’s 2018 City Profile Report. The report also indicated that Santa Rosa’s 2017 rental vacancy rate was 2.7 percent, lower than that of the county (3.3 percent), state (3.8 percent) and nation (6.2 percent). 

“Rent just got really high after the [Tubbs] fire, and I lost my roommate so I just wasn't able to keep my house,” Vicino said. “I bought a motorhome and moved back to a property on Stony Point Road but that got foreclosed. Then my car got stolen.” 

It was hard hit after hard hit. Now, after losing his trailer and becoming unsheltered, Vicino’s future remains uncertain. 

“I don't have a plan,” Vicino said, when asked where he will go when Joe Rodota Trail is cleared. “Now it is just to stay warm for the night. I slept outside last night. I only got this tent today, and it was freezing with just me and the dog. My main concern is how to feed us and get warm for the night and where to shower.”

Vicino’s experience of losing his home after a wildfire is a common one in Sonoma County, which has seen the Kincade Fire, Tubbs Fire, Nuns Fire, Atlas Fire, Pocket Fire and Valley Fire since 2015.   

“I just heard from a gentleman who was burned out in Paradise,” Adrienne Lauby, founder of the Sonoma County nonprofit Homeless Action, said. “He’s now living in an RV and getting harrassed by the police. He said he went down to the Joe Rodota Trail, and he found 11 people who were burned out from Paradise.” 

Lauby founded Homeless Action to help advocate for people experiencing homelessness in Sonoma County. The group holds weekly community meetings, protests and press conferences.  

While Santa Rosa has started some programs and initiatives to address the city’s homelessness, like emergency shelters, day services, street outreach and rental assistance, Lauby said more systemic problems remain. 

“Probably the biggest reason for homelessness in the Bay Area is that wages and rent don’t match,” Lauby said. “The wages need to go up. We need to have tenant protections and some kind of rent control.”

Lauby started her activism to end homelessness after being an advocate for disability issues for much of her life. She noticed a large overlap between disability and homelessness. 

According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a federal partnership to end homelessness, 24 percent of people who are chronically homeless in the U.S. have a disability. 

Savannah Carlson, a volunteer with the HIV prevention organization Face to Face, noted that many on the Joe Rodota Trail have disabilities as well. On Jan. 20, Carlson and other volunteers were working to prevent drug overdose and HIV infection in the encampment by picking up used syringes and giving out clean needles, condoms and Narcan, a medication used to treat opioid overdoses.  

“My godmother is disabled, and she has to live on $1,100 a month, and that is just not feasible for most people,” Carlson said. “There are some people who are here because of trauma, like veterans, and post-traumatic stress disorder is really common with people who are assaulted, like women who are raped.”

Disabilities and other structural barriers prevent many people in the encampment from accessing social services, according to Mary Lopez, 58, who has lived on the trail for three months. 

“I think [social services] should just come to us and talk to us because a lot of times it’s hard for us to walk,” Lopez said. “We don’t have money to take the bus. I’ve seen a lot of people like that. Or their health is bad or they’re disabled.” 

These obstacles also prevent many people from finding shelter. 

“Right now, a lot of the shelters are full. So we just have to keep on calling. Or they can call us if we have a cell phone. If not, that’s the hard thing too, if we don’t have a cell phone or we don’t have money, that’s just really hard, and we lose our spot, so we’re stuck,” Lopez said.

Lopez has called at least four shelters, all of which are full. She’s currently looking for a roommate who can help make rent affordable. 

For some people, shelters often aren’t viable solutions. Many shelters can’t accommodate pets or families.  

Cina Hone, 49, has lived on the Joe Rodota Trail since August and been unsheltered for 27 years. Most shelters won’t let her bring her 12-year-old chihuahua with her.

“This right here is Little Mama. She saved my life and I saved hers,” Hone said.

She began crying as she brought her dog out from under the large beige tent she was sitting under. 

“The day she was brought to me, I was going to wait until dark, and I was going to commit suicide that night,” Hone said. “My friend brought her to me an hour before dark and walked away. He said, ‘You need it as much as it needs you,’ and he walked away.”

While Hone was glad for the pallet buildings that the city had constructed, she believed it’s just a band-aid on a larger problem and would disperse the community that people on the trail had built. 

As Hone talked, several people walking or biking by on the trail nodded and called out to her. 

“Someone was asking me what is the difference between a community and a neighborhood. How many people in those houses over there personally talk to their neighbor?” Hone gestured at the suburban houses that backed up to the trail. “We [the people on the trail] all interact with each other. If one person needs help, we band together to help them.”

The city’s decision to clear the encampment resulted in part from the tension it created among people in the nearby neighborhoods, who complained that the encampment brought rat infestations, drugs and crime.

“The neighbors have legitimate concerns. It’s not easy having an unregulated homeless camp in your backyard, and it does come with its jeopardies,” Lauby said. “That said, a lot of what they’re going on is fear-based and rumors and ‘Oh one thing happened one time, so now I’m sure that it’s happened many times.’” 

Mattie Morgan, a Santa Rosa native who has worked at a Goodwill next to the trail for two months, said that people from the encampment sometimes steal from the store. However, she said, many people not from the encampment also steal from the store. 

Donna Panett, a supervisor at the Goodwill, agreed with Morgan and stressed that individual people on the trail, and elsewhere in the city and county, required individual solutions.

“No matter how you look at it and how you portray it, they are all still people, just like everyone else who walks through this store,” Panett said. “These people are looked at because it impacts a path and homeowners who use the trails but what about everybody who doesn’t have a place outside of this path?” 

While the Joe Rodota Trail encampment may be gone, the city, the county and the larger Bay Area have a long road ahead to end homelessness in the area, a problem intricately tied to the ongoing housing crisis. 

“Homelessness is not a charity issue. It’s a political issue. It has to do with how we treat people who are in a different income bracket, who are poorer than average,” Lauby said. “It really requires us as a community to say, ‘No. This isn’t acceptable. Whatever people did or do or whatever kind of lives they have, they shouldn’t have to sleep under a bush at night.’”